Back to the Primitive As Tarzan struck the water, his first impulse was to swim clear of the ship and possible danger from her propellers.He knew whom to thank for his present predicament, and as he lay in the sea, just supporting himself by a gentle movement of his hands, his chief emotion was one of chagrin that he had been so easily bested by Rokoff.
He lay thus for some time, watching the receding and rapidly diminishing lights of the steamer without it ever once occurring to him to call for help.He never had called for help in his life, and so it is not strange that he did not think of it now.Always had he depended upon his own prowess and resourcefulness, nor had there ever been since the days of Kala any to answer an appeal for succor.When it did occur to him it was too late.
There was, thought Tarzan, a possible one chance in a hundred thousand that he might be picked up, and an even smaller chance that he would reach land, so he determined that to combine what slight chances there were, he would swim slowly in the direction of the coast--the ship might have been closer in than he had known.
His strokes were long and easy--it would be many hours before those giant muscles would commence to feel fatigue.
As he swam, guided toward the east by the stars, he noticed that he felt the weight of his shoes, and so he removed them.
His trousers went next, and he would have removed his coat at the same time but for the precious papers in its pocket.
To assure himself that he still had them he slipped his hand in to feel, but to his consternation they were gone.
Now he knew that something more than revenge had prompted Rokoff to pitch him overboard--the Russian had managed to obtain possession of the papers Tarzan had wrested from him at Bou Saada.The ape-man swore softly, and let his coat and shirt sink into the Atlantic.Before many hours he had divested himself of his remaining garments, and was swimming easily and unencumbered toward the east.
The first faint evidence of dawn was paling the stars ahead of him when the dim outlines of a low-lying black mass loomed up directly in his track.A few strong strokes brought him to its side--it was the bottom of a wave-washed derelict.
Tarzan clambered upon it--he would rest there until daylight at least.He had no intention to remain there inactive--a prey to hunger and thirst.If he must die he preferred dying in action while making some semblance of an attempt to save himself.
The sea was quiet, so that the wreck had only a gently undulating motion, that was nothing to the swimmer who had had no sleep for twenty hours.Tarzan of the Apes curled up upon the slimy timbers, and was soon asleep.
The heat of the sun awoke him early in the forenoon.
His first conscious sensation was of thirst, which grew almost to the proportions of suffering with full returning consciousness; but a moment later it was forgotten in the joy of two almost simultaneous discoveries.The first was a mass of wreckage floating beside the derelict in the midst of which, bottom up, rose and fell an overturned lifeboat;the other was the faint, dim line of a far-distant shore showing on the horizon in the east.
Tarzan dove into the water, and swam around the wreck to the lifeboat.The cool ocean refreshed him almost as much as would a draft of water, so that it was with renewed vigor that he brought the smaller boat alongside the derelict, and, after many herculean efforts, succeeded in dragging it onto the slimy ship's bottom.There he righted and examined it--the boat was quite sound, and a moment later floated upright alongside the wreck.Then Tarzan selected several pieces of wreckage that might answer him as paddles, and presently was making good headway toward the far-off shore.
It was late in the afternoon by the time he came close enough to distinguish objects on land, or to make out the contour of the shore line.Before him lay what appeared to be the entrance to a little, landlocked harbor.The wooded point to the north was strangely familiar.Could it be possible that fate had thrown him up at the very threshold of his own beloved jungle! But as the bow of his boat entered the mouth of the harbor the last shred of doubt was cleared away, for there before him upon the farther shore, under the shadows of his primeval forest, stood his own cabin--built before his birth by the hand of his long-dead father, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
With long sweeps of his giant muscles Tarzan sent the little craft speeding toward the beach.Its prow had scarcely touched when the ape-man leaped to shore--his heart beat fast in joy and exultation as each long-familiar object came beneath his roving eyes--the cabin, the beach, the little brook, the dense jungle, the black, impenetrable forest.
The myriad birds in their brilliant plumage--the gorgeous tropical blooms upon the festooned creepers falling in great loops from the giant trees.
Tarzan of the Apes had come into his own again, and that all the world might know it he threw back his young head, and gave voice to the fierce, wild challenge of his tribe.
For a moment silence reigned upon the jungle, and then, low and weird, came an answering challenge--it was the deep roar of Numa, the lion; and from a great distance, faintly, the fearsome answering bellow of a bull ape.
Tarzan went to the brook first, and slaked his thirst.
Then he approached his cabin.The door was still closed and latched as he and D'Arnot had left it.He raised the latch and entered.Nothing had been disturbed; there were the table, the bed, and the little crib built by his father--the shelves and cupboards just as they had stood for ever twenty-three years--just as he had left them nearly two years before.
His eyes satisfied, Tarzan's stomach began to call aloud for attention--the pangs of hunger suggested a search for food.
