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When Jan recovered consciousness once more he was lying in the bottom of the boat, which the black-robed man was poling up the narrow stream. He tried to move, and found that not only his wrists, but his ankles also, were bound. Piled in the boat around him were many baskets of lotus plants which his captor had gathered.
At first they passed only the moss-draped, liana-laced border of the jungle, but they presently arrived at a place where a high wall of black marble fronted the stream. The prow of the boat grounded at the base of a flight of steps which led up from the water’s edge to a massive gate that barred a great arched gateway. At each side of this stood a guard in black armor, holding a long pike and wearing a sword and dagger.
The man in the boat shouted, and the gate swung back. A dozen black-robed figures came through it and down the steps. Some of them dragged the prow of the boat higher, while others took out the baskets of lotus plants. Many exclaimed in apparent surprise as they saw Jan lying bound in the bottom of the boat, but none offered to touch him.
When the cargo of plants had been removed, Jan’s captor looped a rope around his neck. Then he drew a knife from his girdle and cut the rope that bound his ankles, signing for him to rise.
Jan stood up, and his head swam dizzily, for it was still rocking from the blow he had received. But his captor, with a hoarse command which he could not comprehend, stepped out of the boat and tugged at the rope circling his neck—an unspoken order which the captive understood very well— and which he had to obey.
After following his conductor up the steps, Jan was led through an immense garden of well-kept flowers, shrubs and trees. It was decorated with statuary depicting some figures of rare beauty and others of surpassing ugliness. And dotted here and there were pools and fountains. In some of these pools were sacred lotuses, budding and in full bloom; in others, Jan saw the black-robes setting out the plants which had just been taken from the nearby stream.
Having crossed the garden, they entered a doorway where two more black- armored pikemen stood guard in an immense building of black marble. Then they followed for some distance a long corridor, the floor of which was of black and silver tiles, and the walls of which were decorated with brightly colored murals. Many doorways opened into this corridor, but Jan’s captor did not pause until he reached a great arched opening at its very end.
Here he was halted by two guards, each of whom, in addition to his sword and dagger, carried an immense broad-ax. After exchanging a few words with Jan’s captor, they permitted him to pass into a large central room, the domed ceiling of which resembled the sky on a starlit, moonless night. Conspicuous among the sparkling constellations was—though Jan, of course did not know what it was—a magnified representation of the planet Saturn, showing globe and rings as they would look through a telescope.
Jan stared in wonder and amazement at this vivid and exaggerated representation of the nighttime sky. Then his attention was attracted by a group of black-robed figures standing on the other side of the room at the right and left of a great, black throne.
His captor jerked him roughly forward, nearly choking him, and advancing obsequiously, knelt before the black throne.
Seated on the throne was a man whose emaciated features were of chalky paleness—a white skin stretched over a nearly fleshless skull. On his head was a shimmering silver helmet, the crest of which was fashioned to represent the arched head and neck of an alligator. It sparkled with many jewels, dominated by an immense emerald that flashed above the center of his forehead.
His lank body was encased, also, in silver armor, and over his shoulders was thrown a long, black cape, broidered and bordered with silver and jewels. Depending from about his neck by a slender chain was a ball of silver, circled with many concentric disks of the same metal—an emblem of the planet, Saturn.
As he stared down at Jan, his ghastly features were immobile, inscrutable. Only his sunken eyes, which glowed with the greenish light that characterizes the orbs of night-prowling beasts showed any signs of animation. And their gaze was baleful—menacing.
After looking at Jan for a moment, he addressed a few words to his captor. The latter replied at some length. When he had finished, the man on the throne made a sign with his right hand. As he did so, the youth noticed that in his palm was tattooed a blue flower like that in the paten of Ramona, a copy of which was in Jan’s own palm.
In response to the gesture, a fat, black-robed, shaved-headed fellow with heavy pink jowls came and bowed before the throne, extending a metal box with the lid thrown back. From this box the man on the throne selected a jeweled bracelet, which he tossed to Jan’s still kneeling captor. Then he clapped his hands, whereupon two armored guards clanked into the room from a door at the side of the dais.
At a word of command from the man on the throne, each of them seized Jan by an arm, and together they marched him away. After they had gone down a narrow and tortuous corridor for a long way, they came out into a sunlit courtyard paved with black granite. Crossing this, they arrived before a massive gate, guarded by four armored pikemen and four ax-men.
One of the pikemen drew back a heavy bar, and the gate swung open. After removing the rope from around Jan’s ‘neck and cutting his bonds with a dagger, his two conductors pushed him through. Bewildered, he looked about him as the gate closed behind him.
He stood in a long, rectangular pen surrounded by twenty-foot walls built of large granite blocks, smooth-faced and so carefully fitted together that it was barely possible to see where they joined.
In the pen were several hundred men—not white like his captors, yet lighter in color than the Indians he had encountered in the jungle. Their skin seemed to vary from light tan to yellow. Some of them closely resembled Indians except for their lighter skins, but the eyes of most of them slanted more, and their cheek bones were more pronounced. All wore leather breech clouts and sandals of twisted grass, and some had gaudily colored blankets thrown over their shoulders.
They were squatting on the ground or standing around in little groups, conversing. But as soon as Jan entered he became the target for their glances, and evidently the chief subject of their conversation. Many crowded around him, chattering excitedly, and staring as if he were some strange beast on exhibition. The ring drew closer.
Jan snarled menacingly. He disliked Indians, for with a single exception they had always proved hostile to him; always sought his life. These men reminded him of Indians. But they gave way before him as he strode forward, stiffly erect and alert for attack, toward the gate at the opposite end of the inclosure. Perhaps they were awed by the fire that flashed from his steel-gray eyes. Or they may have been impressed by the powerful muscles that rippled beneath his smooth skin.
Having crossed the inclosure without being touched, Jan sat down in the shadow of the gate. Although many slanting eyes still stared at him, no one had followed. He considered plans for escape. He could not scale the twenty-foot walls unaided. Furthermore, at intervals of thirty feet around the rim were small sentry towers, each of which held two archers. Great stealth would be required, even on the darkest night, to avoid these alert watchers and escape with a whole skin.
Some two months later the captain returned with twenty carriers, all heavily laden. All were paid and dismissed except the two Indians who had previously accompanied him.
During the following week, a circular trench about four feet wide and eight feet deep was dug around the tree which held Jan’s hut. A few inches of the top soil and sod were retained, but all other soil taken out was dumped into the stream.
Then many copper wires were stretched about in the trench, after which it was covered with crossed sticks barely strong enough to sustain the earth and sod laid on them. Running from this trench to the doctor’s cabin, slightly below the surface of the soil, was a concealed insulated electric cable.
His trap completed, the doctor settled down to await the arrival of his victim. His Indians supposed the trench to be an animal trap. Every time a tapir blundered into it, Bracken pretended to be highly elated, made the necessary repairs, and covered the surface as before.
One night the doctor returned to his cabin, tired out after a long march. He had been to the hacienda on the occasion of Ramona’s home-coming from school.
The doctor climbed into his bunk and was just closing his eyes in slumber when the alarm bell sounded on the wall near him. He got up, struck a light, and shut off the alarm. By this time several of his Indians had responded.
“I suppose another confounded tapir has fallen into the pit,” he grumbled, as he got into his clothing. “But we’ll see.”
Carrying flash lights, he and the Indians left for the trap. Walking in the lead, the doctor quickly saw a hole in the thin covering between the tree and the river.
The air was heavy with mingled odors of gas and ether.
The doctor stepped up to the hole, and flashed his light within. Then he gasped in astonishment. His trap contained a victim!
Two Indians came up with stout looped ropes. When they saw what lay in the bottom of the pit, they too ‘gaped in amazement. For it was the body of a man clad from head to foot in shining golden armor.
One loop was dropped around a foot, and pushed into place with a long pole. The other was dropped around the helmeted head. In a few moments the armored body lay on the surface of the ground.
With his long pole, the doctor shut off the machinery that was flooding the interior of the trench with ether-spray and gas. Then he raised one of his victim’s eyelids to note the degree of anaesthesia.
Under his directions, a crude litter was constructed, and in this the insensible one was conveyed to his cabin. The Indians were told to go to their bunks.
As soon as they were gone, the doctor stripped Jan of his armor and clothing. Then he fashioned a crude garment for him from one of his jaguar skins, and dragged him into the cage. From his medicine case, he took a bottle marked with the Latin name, “Cannabis indica.”
When Jan showed signs of returning consciousness, Bracken prepared a solution of the hashish, which he gave him to drink. Then the victim relapsed into a drugged slumber, and the doctor went back to his bunk.
For more than two weeks the doctor kept Jan under the influence of hashish, that drug which changes the gentlest of men to dangerous, insane killers. Hashish, the mind-destroyer, from which we have derived our word “assassin.”
It was his purpose to undermine Jan’s mentality by drugs and hypnotic suggestion, until Jan had reverted to the stage at which he escaped from the menagerie and would be therefore subject to the doctor’s control as he had been during his life behind the bars of a cage.
Dr. Bracken also constructed a cage on wheels, a narrow affair that could be dragged along the jungle paths cleared by machetes. When all was ready, he traveled north until he came within striking range of his victim, Georgia Trevor. An Indian was dispatched to circle the plantation and come back from the north with the report that Jan had been seen in that direction.
From his place of concealment, the doctor grinned his triumph as he saw Harry Trevor and Don Fernando leave with a party of searchers, following their false informant.
He waited for darkness, then saw to it that his stage was properly set. Georgia Trevor, he observed, was alone in the living room of the cottage they were occupying while the big house was being built.
After leaving instructions with Santos and the two Indians who waited in the shadows with the caged Jan, he walked boldly up to the front door and entered.
Georgia Trevor, who had been reading, started up in astonishment at his abrupt entrance.
“You!” she said. “I thought it was Harry, coming back.”
“I have a surprise for you,” he announced. “Remain where you are.”
“You don’t mean—?”
“But I do. I’ve found your son. I’ve found Jan.”
There was the sound of shuffling feet—something sliding across the porch toward the door.
The doctor clapped his hands. A figure shambled into the room, walking ape-like on toes and knuckles—a redheaded youth whose sole garment was a tattered jaguar skin.
Georgia Trevor gazed at the figure, horrified, fascinated, as a bird gazes at a serpent about to devour it. Jan’s eyes stared wildly back at her —devoid of reason, menacing.
“Madame,” said the doctor, “behold your son.” Then he suddenly clapped his hands, and cried:
“Mother! Kill!”
He watched gloatingly as with a horrible bestial roar, the drug-crazed Jan charged straight for the woman who had borne him.
Ramona Suarez drew the prow of her canoe up on the dock in front of the Trevor cottage. The doña had gone to bed with a headache, leaving Ramona to her own devices, and the girl had decided that she would cross the river and spend the evening with Georgia Trevor.
As she walked up the sloping lawn toward the house, she noticed a shadowy something on the front porch.
There seemed to be a cart at the bottom of the steps, and from this two men were sliding a tall, narrow cage toward the door. She walked closer, then gave a little gasp of surprise for by the lamplight that streamed out from the house she saw that Jan was in the cage. It was being moved by Santos and one of the Indians who had abducted her. Although she had no inkling of the purpose behind these actions, she knew that it could not be other than evil. She must warn Jan’s mother.
Keeping in the shadow of the shrubbery, she ran lightly around to the side of the house. A French window stood open, and there was a screen door on that side of the porch. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and stepped silently inside. Through the French window she saw Georgia Trevor, pale and frightened, standing beside her chair. Advancing toward her with a peculiar, ape-like walk and the look of an insane killer in his bloodshot eyes, was Jan.
She heard the words of the doctor: “Madame, behold your son,” and his command, “Mother! Kill!”
As Jan emitted his terrible roar and charged, Ramona ran between him and his mother.
“Jan! Jan!” she cried. “What are you doing? Stop!”
Jan paused, stood erect, staring fixedly at her as if trying to evoke some lost memory.
The doctor seized her by the arm, jerked her roughly aside.
“Keep out of this, you little foot!” he snarled.
Some thought, some suggestion penetrated Jan’s hypnotized, drug-fogged mind as the doctor dragged the girl aside. This girl was his. Some one— it must be an enemy—was hurting her.
With a second roar as thunderous as the first, he charged again, but this time at the doctor.
Ramona covered her eyes with her hands. There were groans, snarls, thuds curses—the snapping of human bones and the rending of human flesh. Then an ominous stillness, broken only by some one’s loud, labored breathing.
Suddenly Ramona was caught up as lightly as if she had been a child and carried out of the house, across the lawn, through the rows of young rubber trees, into the darkness of the jungle.
Weeks later, Harry Trevor and his wife were following four Indians who carried in a litter, a hideous, misshapen wreck of a man. One eyelid sagged in an empty socket.
An ear was missing. Where the nose should have been, a small square of surgical gauze was held in place by bits of crossed tape. The arms and legs were twisted and useless.
When it was found that the mangled form of Dr. Bracken had some life in it an Indian had been dispatched for Padre Luis. But he had returned with the news that the good padre had gone on a mission in the interior, and would be gone for weeks. It was a journey of two weeks to the nearest surgeon, and it would take him two more weeks to return. By that time it would be too late to set the doctor’s broken arms and legs. And he was so near death that he could not travel.
So the woman and man he had devoted the best years of his life to injuring, nursed him and did the best they could to maintain his flickering spark of life.
He had recovered sufficiently in six weeks to stand travel in a litter, and Harry Trevor was sending him to Bolivar for surgical attention.
As the Indians carefully deposited the litter in the boat, a canoe drew up beside it and grounded against the sloping landing. A tall straight clean- limbed young man with the features of a Greek god crowned by a tumbling mass of auburn curls sprang lightly out. He stood for a moment, smiling at the couple who stood on the dock staring at him as if they could not believe their eyes.
His silken garments, decked with gold and jewels worth a fortune, were those of another age. Jewels blazed from the golden hilts of the sword and dagger that hung from his belt.
“Father! Mother!” he said, holding out his arms. “I am your son, Jan. I have come back to you because—because we need each other.”
The hideous wreck in the litter cocked its good eye up at the little group on the dock—saw Jan embrace his father, kiss his mother, whose auburn head barely reached to his shoulder. With a shudder Dr. Bracken turned away from the sight of his ruined plan for revenge.
“Where is Ramona?” Jan’s mother asked.
“She is with her father and mother,” replied Jan. “Her real father and mother. She’s a royal princess, you know. I just came from the hacienda. Carried a message to the don and doña for her. She will live with her own parents, but has promised to visit them often.”
“And you, Jan—my son! My boy! You will stay with us, won’t you, now that we’ve found you after all these years? Think of it! I have always thought of you as a baby, for all those years, but I find you grown up— a man.”
“Of course I’ll stay, mother, for a while. And I’ll come back often. But next month you must come with me for a visit. Preparations are being made for a royal wedding, and I wouldn’t want to keep Ramona waiting.”
“Jan! You mean that you two are going to be married?”
“Of course. And mother, other than you, she is the most wonderful girl in all the world.”
THE END
Dr. Bracken suavely bowed his Florida cracker patient out of his dispensary. It was in the smaller right wing of his rambling ancestral home on a hummock in the Everglades, near the Gulf of Mexico and five miles from Citrus Crossing.
The doctor cursed under his breath as a sudden uproar came from the larger right wing of the house, directly behind him. This wing, a place double- locked and forbidden even to his two old colored servants, had no entrance save through a narrow passageway that connected it with his private office in the smaller wing.
So far as his servants, Aunt Jenny and Uncle Henry, were concerned, a lock was superfluous. The muffled animal-like sounds that came from it were so strange and unearthly that they regarded them with superstitious awe.
As he closed the door behind his patient it seemed that a mask suddenly slipped from the doctor’s face, so swift and horrible was the change that came over his features. He had been smiling and suave, but as be turned away from the door his demeanor was more like that of a frenzied madman. His teeth, bared like those of a jungle beast at bay, gleamed white and menacing against the iron-gray of his closely cropped vandyke. His small, deep-set eyes burned malevolently, madly.
Fishing a bunch of keys from his pocket, he opened the door to the narrow passageway, pressed a switch that flooded it with light, and entered, locking it behind him. The roars were louder now. At the end of the passageway he used another key to open a second door, and stepped into the room beyond, pressing a second switch as he did so. The yellow rays of a bulb overhead revealed the stoutly: barred cages that housed his private menagerie within soundproofed walls.
In the cage at his elbow an African leopard snarled menacingly. Its next- door neighbor, a South American jaguar, padded silently back and forth with head hanging low and slavering jowls slightly parted. In the adjacent cage, the bars of which had been reinforced with powerful wire meshwork, a huge python was coiled complacently around a whitewashed tree trunk, its shimmering folds resting on the shortened stumps of the limbs. Beside this was the cage of Malik, the old and nearly toothless lion.
The glittering eyes of the doctor swept the room, seeking the cause of the disturbance. They paused for a moment at the cage of Tichuk, the surly old male chimpanzee, who was squatting on his shelf, striving to look innocent. But the Brazilian spider monkeys in the cage at Tichuk’s left were leaping and skipping about and chattering excitedly in a manner that showed all too plainly where the trouble had centered.
In two cages which adjoined each other and that of Tichuk were two creatures: Chicma, an old female chimpanzee, and a naked boy sixteen years of age. He was a handsome, superbly muscled lad, with a straight, athletic figure, broad shoulders, narrow hips, and the features of a Greek god, crowned by a tumbled mass of auburn curls. Several bloody scratches stood out against the white of his face and arms, and one hand still clutched a tuft of chimpanzee hair which he made no effort to conceal.
“Fighting through the bars with Tichuk again,” muttered the doctor. He reached for a whip hanging on a near-by peg. Then withdrew his hand. “Won’t punish him this time,” he growled to himself. “Tomorrow he must perform the act of vengeance for which I have trained him. Then he will leave this place forever. And I will be compensated for my years of bitterness and suffering.”
Glancing at his watch, the doctor saw that it was nearly feeding time. He went into the cooler and emerged a moment later. Growls, snarls, chatterings, and rending sounds marked his, progress.
At last Chicma, the female chimpanzee, was given bet ration of bread and lettuce; but to the omnivorous manchild’s ration a pound of raw beef was added.
This boy, the innocent victim of the doctor’s insane hatred for a woman, had never seen a human being other than the physician. Nor had he glimpsed any more of the outside world than might be observed through the small, high windows of the menagerie, or above the tall stockade just outside it, where he was exercised.
Dr. Bracken had loved the boy’s mother, Georgia Adams, a titian-haired Southern beauty, with a fiery passion of which few men are capable. A sudden declaration before his departure on a trip to Africa had won what he thought was a promise from her—a half-hearted assent she had evidently regretted the moment he had gone; but it was the one thing on which he had counted during all his weary months of tramping in the jungles. Her face had smiled at him in the light of many a camp fire; her voice had soothed his troubled sleep as he lay in his net-covered hammock while fierce beasts of prey roamed just outside the boma. For him the red-gold sunsets had reflected the glory of her titian hair. Bits of the blue vault of heaven visible at times through rents in the forest canopy, had hinted of the more wondrous blue of her eyes.
But he had returned to America only to have the cup of happiness dashed rudely from his lips—for she had married Harry Trevor.
True, she had told him, when they had a few moments alone, of writing a letter breaking the engagement only a week after his departure. He had accepted the statement politely, yet deep in his heart he doubted it. She had broken faith, and in his estimation a woman capable of that was capable of anything. The letter, if indeed there had been a letter, had never reached him.
So love had turned to hate—an abnormally intense hate that filled his waking hours and made his nights restless and hideous—a passionate, unreasoning hate that engendered a desire which soon became a fixed purpose and the sole end toward which he planned and strove—revenge.
But Dr. Bracken’s warped mind had cunningly pretended friendship, so cunningly that he served the Trevors as their family physician in Florida. And the birth of a son and heir gave him his long-awaited opportunity for a revenge which would be no trifling retribution from which Georgia Trevor would soon recover.
The kidnaping of the day-old boy had been ridiculously easy. At first the doctor’s diabolical plan had been to mutilate and cripple the child, turn his face into a hideous monstrosity, and return him, to be a living curse to his parents. But an event had occurred in the menagerie which changed his plans and gave him the germ of an even more diabolical scheme.
For the male chimpanzee, Tichuk, at that time caged with his mate Chicma, had slain their little one in a fit of fury and was attacking her, when the doctor returned with the stolen baby. Dr. Bracken had quieted both chimpanzees with hypodermics and removed the unconscious Tichuk to another cage. Then, a terrible smile upon his face; he had skinned the baby chimpanzee, treated its hide with an odorless preservative and sewed the cotton-padded skin about the human baby. As Chicma came out of her drugged sleep he placed the child in her arms.
The chimpanzee, dazed and foggy of perception, had sniffed the hairy hide of her own child. She recognized the scent and feel; yet the tensely waiting doctor, club and whip in hand, saw her hesitate in puzzlement, as if on the verge of flinging away this somehow suspiciously changed child of hers. But nature and mother-instinct conquered, and she fed the hungry infant.
Filled with a fierce exultation, the doctor stole away, muttering:
“What a scheme! The body of a man and the mind of an ape. And I would have made a physical monster of him, but with a clear mind. She would not have recognized him—might not have acknowledged him; but now, with features unchanged, she can’t deny him—and when she has seen she will die —die by the hand of her own son. I will teach him to slay. Only two words of the human language, other than his name and the names of these beasts, shall he know: ‘Mother,’ and ‘Kill!’”
Now, as the demented physician looked at the sixteen-year-old ape-boy, a grin of triumph overspread his satanic features, for the awful climax of his revenge was nearly at hand.
The titian-haired woman who was the object of his hatred had come very near to dying, and thus cheating him of his full measure of vengeance, shortly after she learned that her child had been stolen. But Dr. Bracken had stood between her and death, fending off the scythe of the Grim Reaper.
For fourteen years Georgia Trevor had been an invalid—constantly under his care. Dr. Bracken had never let her lose hope of the child’s return. Then her husband, who had, meanwhile inherited the enormous fortune of his father, had purchased a palatial yacht and taken her on a two-year cruise.
Only the day before Georgia Trevor and her husband had returned to Citrus Crossing; and the doctor had planned a clever coup; a faked telegram to get the husband away from the louse, that he might consummate the revenge for which he had waited so long, and for which he had trained the boy from babyhood.
Dr. Bracken, who had a liking for things oriental, had named the boy “Jan,” after Jan ibn Jan who, in Arabic legends, was Sultan of the Evil Jinn. A truly demoniac name—the choice of a diabolical mind.
As the raw meat was thrown to him, Jan who was a perfect mimic, seized it with a snarl as he had seen the carnivora seize theirs. While the doctor watched, seated in his chair, with a long black stogie going, the lad retired, growling, to a corner of his cage. First he ate the meat; then he munched a few lettuce leaves. The rest of his rations he passed through the bars to his foster-mother.
When Jan had finished his meal, the doctor arose, took his whip from the peg, and opened the doors of their cages. Then he shouted: “Jan! Chicma!” and whistled as if he were calling a dog. The boy and chimpanzee came out.
The doctor walked to a door which had been cut in the end of the menagerie wing a number of years before, and opened it. While he fumbled with the latch, the imitative lad, unobserved, opened the catch of the lion’s cage, leaving the door slightly ajar. Then he and the chimpanzee obediently followed the doctor out of the building into a stockade with a twelve-foot board fence around it. In this stockade were various exercising devices—a trapeze, parallel bars, a thick rope for climbing, and a suspended dummy dressed like a woman, with titian hair.
For some time the boy and ape amused themselves by swinging on the trapeze and rope. Then they performed various antics on the parallel bars.
Presently the doctor called them down from the bars. Walking to the dummy of the red-haired woman, he shook it savagely and said:
“Mother! Kill!”
Instantly the boy and ape charged the dummy, biting and tearing with mimic ferocity, the ape snarling and growling, but the boy, between his own snarls and growls, crying: “Mother! Kill!”
Both boy and ape always enjoyed this mimic fight which ended their afternoon exercises, and were loath to leave off when the doctor whistled to them.
But before he could summon them a second time there came a terrific growl from the doorway behind them. Turning, he beheld Malik, the old lion, just emerging from the door. With upraised whip he tried to frighten the beast into returning to its cage, but it snarled and raised a huge paw menacingly.
He flicked the lion on the nose, and it backed up with a growl. Again he stung the tender nose, and the lion slunk, snarling, back into the house. Here it was necessary once more to use the lash in order to get the stubborn feline to enter the cage. When the beast was inside, the doctor shut and fastened the door, and with a sigh of relief took his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his dripping face.
But his look of relief was instantly supplanted by one of fierce anger as he realized that it must have been Jan who opened the catch of that cage door. Well, Jan must be taught a lesson. He should receive a whipping that he would not soon forget.
Gripping his whip more tightly and frowning thunderously, the doctor strode menacingly through the door. But after one look around the stockade he gasped in astonishment.
Jan and Chicma were gone!
At the first growl of the lion from the doorway, Chicma, who had an intense hereditary fear of the king of beasts, ran, and seizing the end of the climbing rope swung high in the air. At the end of her swing she was only a few feet from the top of the fence which surrounded the stockade. Letting go of the rope, and still carried onward by the momentum of her swing, she caught the top of the fence with both forepaws, drew herself up, and dropped to the ground on the other side.
Jan was not nearly so frightened by the growl of the lion. But he was at the imitative age, and the beast that had just gone over the fence was, so far as his knowledge went, his parent. Fully as agile as the chimpanzee and nearly as strong, it was easy for him to swing up onto. the fence and follow.
Still thoroughly frightened, she was standing fifty feet away from the fence in a patch of saw-palmettos, bouncing up and down and calling to him in the language of the chimpanzees—the only language Jan fully understood:
“Come, come! Hurry, or Malik the Terrible One will eat you!”
As soon as his feet struck the ground she scampered off through the palmettos, swinging along on hind toes and fore-knuckles. Jan, who had never traveled for any great distance, followed, imitating her peculiar gait for a while, but presently found that he could keep up with her much better by traveling on only two legs, as the doctor traveled.
He was without clothing of any kind, and the saw-edged leaves cruelly lacerated his tender skin, so he was soon a mass of bloody scratches. His feet, bruised and cut by sticks and sharp stones, left spots of red on the ground. But all of these hurts only served to accelerate his speed. He imagined that the shrubs were angry with him for some unknown reason, and, like Dr. Bracken with his whip, were punishing him. He must get away from them, as Chicma was doing.
They crossed a hummock on which a few tall, gaunt, long-needle pines stood like silent sentinels. Beyond this the ground became marshy, so they were sometimes wading ankle-deep in muck, sometimes sunk to the armpits in mud water, and subaqueous vegetation.
This was Jan’s first sight of the outside world, and despite the hurts he was getting, he was thrilled immeasurably Freedom—the only condition that makes life tolerable and desirable to men who have spirit—was his for the first time. It went to his head like strong wine. He shouted—a wordless, triumphant roar, voicing the exuberance of his feelings.
Everywhere about him were new sights smells and sounds. With the soft mud oozing up between his toes, the warm water splashing around his legs, and the hot sun beating mercilessly down on his tousled red head and bare body, he strode happily onward.
Presently they came to another hummock, on which grew several wild orange trees. Chicma sprang into one of these and began to regale herself with the highly acid fruit, and Jan followed her example.
The sun was low on the western horizon when they came to a forest of cypress and water oaks, most of which were standing in the water. They were heavily draped with Spanish moss and Jan, who was wont to personalize everything, compared the bearded trees with the bearded doctor, and heartily disliked them for the similarity.
Scarcely had they entered the shady depths ere Jan heard, far off in the direction whence they had come a weird sound that sent gooseflesh crawling all over his body.
Chicma heard it, too, and although she had been traveling slowly before, redoubled her speed, urging Jan in her queer chimpanzee gutturals to hurry after her. Jan had heard similar sounds before, and they had always, caused the gooseflesh to come up on his skin even though he had no idea that they were the baying of bloodhounds trailing some luckless Negro who was attempting to escape from the convict camp.
Chicma sensed that the creatures were on their trail, so she sprang into a tree, calling to Jan to follow her, just as two huge bloodhounds, their quarry in sight, plunged forward with eager barks to seize them.
For a moment Jan stood, looking curiously at the advancing creatures. Then he turned, and with a dexterous leap, caught one of the lower branches of a water oak. Swinging his lithe body up into a tree, he was climbing, and watching the dogs, now leaping and barking beneath him, when he was startled by a thunderous growl just above him.
By this time the darkness had deepened to such an extent that he could not see clearly, but as he glanced fearfully upward, he beheld a tremendous black bulk, from which two gleaming, phosphorescent eyes looked down at him.
Then a huge paw tipped with sharp, sickle-like claws, swung for his upturned face.
As soon As he discovered that Jan and Chicma were not in the stockade, Dr. Bracken realized that they must, somehow, have got over the fence. Although he was a wiry and powerful man, the doctor was unable to leap high enough to grasp the top of the twelve foot barrier that confronted him, nor did Chicma’s method occur to him.
To have Jan seen at large with one of his chimpanzees would mean the destruction, of all his plans, and perhaps of himself. Lynchings were not unknown, and the monstrous crime he had committed would arouse these people to a killing frenzy.
He dashed around the house to where the stockade jutted out from the menagerie. Here his trained hunter’s eye quickly found the tracks where Jan and Chicma had alighted, and he hurried away on the trail, feeling confident of being able to soon overtake his fleeing quarry. He smiled when he saw the spots of blood mingled with the boy’s footprints, for he believed that the lad would not long endure the pain of attempting to escape.
He crossed the stretch of saw palmetto and the pine-crested hummock with speed and confidence, but when he entered the marsh on the other side he lost the trail time and again where the tracks were concealed under water, and only found it by repeated circling and searching. This took time, and time, to him was very precious, for he knew that while he was floundering about, there in the muck and water, his quarry was getting farther away.
After about a half hour he decided that he would save time in the end by going back and borrowing a pair of bloodhounds from the sheriff.
He made the excuse that one of his apes had escaped; but it was with great difficulty that he dissuaded the sheriff from accompanying him on the hunt.
The hounds made much swifter progress than the doctor, so much so that they were soon out of sight, and he was able to follow them only by the sound of their baying.
He had traveled a considerable distance into the marsh when he met a Seminole Indian named Pete Little, whom he had often seen around Citrus Crossing.
“You make big hunt?” the Indian asked.
“Yes. One of my apes got away.”
“I seen it,” said Pete, and cast a look at the doctor that was full of meaning. “Red-head boy with it, about sixteen, seventeen year old.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Trevor, she’s red-headed. Her baby boy was stole sixteen year ago.”
“And—”
“I poor. You rich. For thousand dollar I forget.”
“I think that can be arranged,” said the doctor, his face suddenly gone pale. His perfectly controlled features betrayed no other sign of his emotion. He added suddenly, with feigned terror: “Look there, behind you! A moccasin!”
At the sound of that dread word, the Indian turned. He saw no moccasin, but realized too late that he had been tricked. There was a sharp report, a stinging pain that shot through his left side like the searing of a hot iron —and oblivion. As he pitched forward on his face in the muck, the doctor holstered his smoking forty-five, kicked viciously at the prostrate form, and hurried on after the baying bloodhounds, whose distant cries had suddenly changed to fighting growls.
As the sickle-like claws of the big creature above him swung for his face, Jan dodged and hastily scuttled out on the limb. But the cornered black bear was not to be so easily dismissed. With a blood-curdling roar, it plunged down after the naked youth. At this, the blood-hounds below increased their clamor, leaping and barking with redoubled fury.
But the limb that Jan occupied, and onto which the beast had suddenly flung itself, was not equal to the combined weight of boy and brute, and gave way with a resounding crack.
Clutching wildly in mid-air, Jan grasped the tip of a branch which projected from an adjoining tree. It sagged with his weight, but did not break, and with his ape-like agility it was not difficult for him to quickly scramble to a less precarious position beside the trunk.
The bear; meanwhile, crashed to the ground, where it was instantly set upon by the dogs. A thud, and a series of plaintive yelps from one of them indicated that the creature, despite its fall was able to give a good account of itself. A medley of fierce barking, snarling and growling followed. But the bear, harassed by the dogs but not particularly fearful of them, lumbered away through the dark forest, crashing through the underbrush and splashing through the pools. Presently the sounds of its movements died away, and there drifted to Jan only the barking of the hounds, which were evidently still worrying their quarry.
Then it was that a new sound came to the alert ears of the young fugitive —the sound of a man, crashing and splashing among the trees. Looking in the direction of the sound, Jan saw a bright light moving through the forest.
As he was watching the approach of the man with mingled curiosity and fear, Chicma suddenly swung herself into the tree beside him.
“Come,” she barked, “or Cruel One will get us! Follow me!”
Jan understood that by “Cruel One,” she meant Dr. Bracken. All the occupants of their small menagerie world had been similarly named to him by his foster mother. The lion was “Terrible One,” the jaguar “Fierce One,” the snake “Sleepy One,” and the monkeys “Chattering Ones,” words which would have been nothing more than guttural grunts and barks to anyone else, but each of which had a distinct meaning for Jan.
Frightened at the very mention of Dr. Bracken, Jan hurried after the chimpanzee, as she swung from tree to tree, taking a direction opposite that of the hounds and the great beast they were harrying.
Presently, as they moved away among the cool, leafy branches, the sounds made by the doctor died away, and his flashlight was no longer visible. A little later, Jan could not hear the hounds, and the only noises that came to his ears were the natural sounds of the swamp—the hoarse booming of frogs, the chirping of crickets, the humming of insects, and the cries of night birds.
Tired and hungry, Jan besought his foster mother to stop, but she would not do so until the very edge of the forest was reached, and they could no longer proceed without descending to the ground. She then curled up in the crotch of a tree, and the weary youth was glad to follow her example.
Jan was awakened by a call from Chicma. Hot sunlight was streaming down on his face through a rift in the branches. Looking down, he beheld the chimpanzee devouring some berries she was gathering from some low bushes that grew along the bank of a tiny stream which meandered through the marsh.
He leaned over to call to her, and as he did so, felt numerous twinges on his back, neck and arms, which changed his cry to one of pain. His limbs and body were bright red in color and felt extremely hot, while touching them caused a burning sensation that was anything but pleasant. There were many small red bumps, too, which itched intolerably, and these combined with the scratches he had received made the boy more uncomfortable than he had ever felt before. It was Jan’s first experience with sunburn and mosquito bites in such heroic doses.
Hearing his cry of pain, Chicma looked up and called softly to him. At this instant the head of an alligator emerged from the water behind her, and the powerful jaws seized her by the arm. She screamed wildly in anguish. As she was being dragged into the water she gripped the thick roots of a cypress with her other arm and hung on, while the reptile shook and tugged, in an effort to break her hold and drag her into the stream.
Jan, who had been about to make a gingerly descent on account of his many hurts, on seeing this attack on his foster-parent, ignored his own soreness and dropped swiftly from limb to limb until he stood beside her. Then, with a snarl like that of a wild beast, he leaped astride the saurian’s back, and bit, scratched and pummeled the armored enemy with no apparent effect except the damage to his own fists. He sought for a hold on the creature’s head, to pull it away from Chicma, and his hands came in contact with two round bumps on top of the head. In these bumps were soft spots. Plunging the middle finger of each hand into one of these, he pulled backward.
At this, the alligator instantly let go its hold on its victim, and backed, wildly threshing, into the water. For Jan had found its eyes— the two most vulnerable points on its entire anatomy. Blinded, and with every bit of fight taken out of it, the reptile thrashed about in the shallow water, its sole object to escape those gouging fingers and unseat the creature on its back. As a result, Jan was thrown into the water, whence he floundered quickly to the shore, while the alligator, bent only on escape, glided to the center of the stream where it sank out of sight.
When Jan reached the bank, Chicma had climbed up into the tree and was whimpering and licking her wounded arm. He called to her to come down— that the danger from the monster had passed—but she was so badly frightened that she paid no heed to him.
This was Jan’s first battle with anything other than the red-headed dummy of a woman which Cruel One had provided. He had, of course, played at fighting with Chicma many times, for she had, to the best of her ability, instructed him in the arts of defense and offense, but this was his first real fight, and he had won. He had conquered a very terrible monster of which even Chicma was afraid.
His chest swelled with pride as he strode stiffly up and down the muddy bank, calling the alligator all manner of disagreeable chimpanzee names, and inviting it to come back for more punishment. He tired of this presently, when the reptile did not reappear, and set to work to still the craving of his empty stomach by plucking and eating the berries which grew in profusion thereabout. He quickly learned to distinguish between green and ripe berries.
Jan’s victory over the alligator made him feel superior to the ape —and whereas he had previously believed her greater than himself, both mentally and physically, he now knew, instinctively, that this was not the case. His man mind had begun to assert itself—to take its natural place in the scale of creation. He was stronger and braver than Chicma, and a greater fighter. She might betray her weakness and inferiority by whimpering, but as for him, no matter how great the pain, he would henceforth suffer in silence.
They traveled without food until late in the afternoon, when they came to the lonely cabin of one of the dwellers in the swamp. After reconnoitering to make sure that there was no one about they raided a garden which yielded sweet potatoes, celery, lettuce and tomatoes, with some luscious grapefruit off a nearby tree for dessert.
When they had eaten their fill, they resumed their journey, traveling toward the reddening disk of the setting sun. But they had not gone far when there came to the ears of Jan a strange and fearful sound. It seemed to him an incongruous combination of whispering and roaring, and his active young imagination immediately set to work to picture the monster that could make so voluminous and terrible a sound.
He hesitated, fearful of venturing farther in the direction of the noise but as Chicma advanced unperturbed, and as he now felt himself braver and greater than she, he marched on beside her with no outward sign of the trepidation he felt.
It was not long before they came to what was to Jan a most amazing sight. It was a broad, curved beach of gleaming white sand with white-crested waves rolling in, dashing a fine spray high in the air and leaving a line of silvery spume at the point where they receded.
Chicma walked out upon the smooth white sand, and turned to the left. Jan, perturbed but resolute, walked beside her. The sand felt soft and pleasant to his injured feet, and it was not long before he gathered sufficient courage to walk out into the spume. This felt exceptionally pleasant until the salt began to smart his wounds, whereupon he imagined that the sea was becoming angry with him, and quickly retreated to the dry sands.