第86章

"And I too," replied Tarzan, "and we may have him yet.He was safe and unwounded the last word I had.And now," he said, "we must plan upon our return.Would you like to rebuild the bungalow and gather together the remnants of our Waziri or would you rather return to London?"

"Only to find Jack," she said."I dream always of the bungalow and never of the city, but John, we can only dream, for Obergatz told me that he had circled this whole country and found no place where he might cross the morass."

"I am not Obergatz," Tarzan reminded her, smiling."We will rest today and tomorrow we will set out toward the north.It is a savage country, but we have crossed it once and we can cross it again."

And so, upon the following morning, the Tarmangani and his mate went forth upon their journey across the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho, and ahead of them were fierce men and savage beasts, and the lofty mountains of Pal-ul-don; and beyond the mountains the reptiles and the morass, and beyond that the arid, thorn-covered steppe, and other savage beasts and men and weary, hostile miles of untracked wilderness between them and the charred ruins of their home.

Lieutenant Erich Obergatz crawled through the grass upon all fours, leaving a trail of blood behind him after Jane's spear had sent him crashing to the ground beneath her tree.He made no sound after the one piercing scream that had acknowledged the severity of his wound.He was quiet because of a great fear that had crept into his warped brain that the devil woman would pursue and slay him.And so he crawled away like some filthy beast of prey, seeking a thicket where he might lie down and hide.

He thought that he was going to die, but he did not, and with the coming of the new day he discovered that his wound was superficial.The rough obsidian-shod spear had entered the muscles of his side beneath his right arm inflicting a painful, but not a fatal wound.With the realization of this fact came a renewed desire to put as much distance as possible between himself and Jane Clayton.And so he moved on, still going upon all fours because of a persistent hallucination that in this way he might escape observation.Yet though he fled his mind still revolved muddily about a central desire--while he fled from her he still planned to pursue her, and to his lust of possession was added a desire for revenge.She should pay for the suffering she had inflicted upon him.She should pay for rebuffing him, but for some reason which he did not try to explain to himself he would crawl away and hide.He would come back though.He would come back and when he had finished with her, he would take that smooth throat in his two hands and crush the life from her.

He kept repeating this over and over to himself and then he fell to laughing out loud, the cackling, hideous laughter that had terrified Jane.Presently he realized his knees were bleeding and that they hurt him.He looked cautiously behind.No one was in sight.He listened.He could hear no indications of pursuit and so he rose to his feet and continued upon his way a sorry sight--covered with filth and blood, his beard and hair tangled and matted and filled with burrs and dried mud and unspeakable filth.He kept no track of time.He ate fruits and berries and tubers that he dug from the earth with his fingers.He followed the shore of the lake and the river that he might be near water, and when ja roared or moaned he climbed a tree and hid there, shivering.

And so after a time he came up the southern shore of Jad-ben-lul until a wide river stopped his progress.Across the blue water a white city glimmered in the sun.He looked at it for a long time, blinking his eyes like an owl.Slowly a recollection forced itself through his tangled brain.This was A-lur, the City of Light.The association of ideas recalled Bu-lur and the Waz-ho-don.They had called him Jad-ben-Otho.He commenced to laugh aloud and stood up very straight and strode back and forth along the shore."I am Jad-ben-Otho," he cried, "I am the Great God.In A-lur is my temple and my high priests.What is Jad-ben-Otho doing here alone in the jungle?"

He stepped out into the water and raising his voice shrieked loudly across toward A-lur."I am Jad-ben-Otho!" he screamed.

"Come hither slaves and take your god to his temple." But the distance was great and they did not hear him and no one came, and the feeble mind was distracted by other things--a bird flying in the air, a school of minnows swimming around his feet.He lunged at them trying to catch them, and falling upon his hands and knees he crawled through the water grasping futilely at the elusive fish.

Presently it occurred to him that he was a sea lion and he forgot the fish and lay down and tried to swim by wriggling his feet in the water as though they were a tail.The hardships, the privations, the terrors, and for the past few weeks the lack of proper nourishment had reduced Erich Obergatz to little more than a gibbering idiot.