As Jane permitted herself to harbor these thoughts, others equally unwelcome forced themselves upon her.
If he belonged to some savage tribe he had a savage wife—a dozen of them perhaps—and wild, half-caste children. The girl shuddered, and when they told her that the cruiser would sail on the morrow she was almost glad.
It was she, though, who suggested that arms, ammunition, supplies and comforts be left behind in the cabin, ostensibly for that intangible personality who had signed himself Tarzan of the Apes, and for D’Arnot should he still be living, but really, she hoped, for her forest god—even though his feet should prove of clay.
And at the last minute she left a message for him, to be transmitted by Tarzan of the Apes.
She was the last to leave the cabin, returning on some trivial pretext after the others had started for the boat.
She kneeled down beside the bed in which she had spent so many nights, and offered up a prayer for the safety of her primeval man, and crushing his locket to her lips she murmured:
“I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you—forever.”
With the report of his gun D’Arnot saw the door fly open and the figure of a man pitch headlong within onto the cabin floor.
The Frenchman in his panic raised his gun to fire again into the prostrate form, but suddenly in the half dusk of the open door he saw that the man was white and in another instant realized that he had shot his friend and protector, Tarzan of the Apes.
With a cry of anguish D’Arnot sprang to the ape-man’s side, and kneeling, lifted the latter’s head in his arms—calling Tarzan’s name aloud.
There was no response, and then D’Arnot placed his ear above the man’s heart. To his joy he heard its steady beating beneath.
Carefully he lifted Tarzan to the cot, and then, after closing and bolting the door, he lighted one of the lamps and examined the wound.
The bullet had struck a glancing blow upon the skull. There was an ugly flesh wound, but no signs of a fracture of the skull.
D’Arnot breathed a sigh of relief, and went about bathing the blood from Tarzan’s face.