For a moment Rokoff stood sneering down upon Jane Clayton,then his eyes fell to the little bundle in her lap. Jane haddrawn one corner of the blanket over the child's face, so thatto one who did not know the truth it seemed but to be sleeping.

"You have gone to a great deal of unnecessary trouble," said Rokoff,"to bring the child to this village. If you had attended to yourown affairs I should have brought it here myself.

"You would have been spared the dangers and fatigue of the journey.But I suppose I must thank you for relieving me of the inconvenienceof having to care for a young infant on the march.

"This is the village to which the child was destined fromthe first. M'ganwazam will rear him carefully, making a goodcannibal of him, and if you ever chance to return to civilizationit will doubtless afford you much food for thought as you comparethe luxuries and comforts of your life with the details of the lifeyour son is living in the village of the Waganwazam.

"Again I thank you for bringing him here for me, and now I must ask youto surrender him to me, that I may turn him over to his foster parents."As he concluded Rokoff held out his hands for the child, a nasty grin ofvindictiveness upon his lips.

To his surprise Jane Clayton rose and, without a word of protest,laid the little bundle in his arms.

"Here is the child," she said. "Thank God he is beyondyour power to harm."

Grasping the import of her words, Rokoff snatched the blanketfrom the child's face to seek confirmation of his fears. Jane Clayton watched his expression closely.

She had been puzzled for days for an answer to the questionof Rokoff's knowledge of the child's identity. If she hadbeen in doubt before the last shred of that doubt was wipedaway as she witnessed the terrible anger of the Russian as helooked upon the dead face of the baby and realized that atthe last moment his dearest wish for vengeance had beenthwarted by a higher power.

Almost throwing the body of the child back into Jane Clayton's arms,Rokoff stamped up and down the hut, pounding the air with hisclenched fists and cursing terribly. At last he halted in frontof the young woman, bringing his face down close to hers.

"You are laughing at me," he shrieked. "You think thatyou have beaten me--eh? I'll show you, as I have shown themiserable ape you call `husband,' what it means to interferewith the plans of Nikolas Rokoff.

"You have robbed me of the child. I cannot make him theson of a cannibal chief, but"--and he paused as though tolet the full meaning of his threat sink deep--"I can make themother the wife of a cannibal, and that I shall do--after Ihave finished with her myself."

If he had thought to wring from Jane Clayton anysign of terror he failed miserably. She was beyond that.Her brain and nerves were numb to suffering and shock.

To his surprise a faint, almost happy smile touched her lips. She was thinking with thankful heart that this poor littlecorpse was not that of her own wee Jack, and that--best of all--Rokoff evidently did not know the truth.

She would have liked to have flaunted the fact in his face,but she dared not. If he continued to believe that the childhad been hers, so much safer would be the real Jack whereverhe might be. She had, of course, no knowledge of the whereaboutsof her little son--she did not know, even, that he stilllived, and yet there was the chance that he might.

It was more than possible that without Rokoff's knowledgethis child had been substituted for hers by one of the Russian'sconfederates, and that even now her son might be safewith friends in London, where there were many, both ableand willing, to have paid any ransom which the traitorousconspirator might have asked for the safe release of LordGreystoke's son.

She had thought it all out a hundred times since she haddiscovered that the baby which Anderssen had placed in herarms that night upon the Kincaid was not her own, and it hadbeen a constant and gnawing source of happiness to her todream the whole fantasy through in its every detail.

No, the Russian must never know that this was not her baby. She realized that her position was hopeless--with Anderssenand her husband dead there was no one in all the world witha desire to succour her who knew where she might be found.

Rokoff's threat, she realized, was no idle one. That hewould do, or attempt to do, all that he had promised, shewas perfectly sure; but at the worst it meant but a little earlierrelease from the hideous anguish that she had been enduring. She must find some way to take her own life before the Russiancould harm her further.

Just now she wanted time--time to think and prepare herselffor the end. She felt that she could not take the last,awful step until she had exhausted every possibility of escape. She did not care to live unless she might find her wayback to her own child, but slight as such a hope appearedshe would not admit its impossibility until the last momenthad come, and she faced the fearful reality of choosing betweenthe final alternatives--Nikolas Rokoff on one hand andself-destruction upon the other.

"Go away!" she said to the Russian. "Go away and leave mein peace with my dead. Have you not brought sufficient miseryand anguish upon me without attempting to harm me further? What wrong have I ever done you that you should persistin persecuting me?"

"You are suffering for the sins of the monkey you chosewhen you might have had the love of a gentleman--of NikolasRokoff," he replied. "But where is the use in discussingthe matter? We shall bury the child here, and you willreturn with me at once to my own camp. Tomorrow I shallbring you back and turn you over to your new husband--thelovely M'ganwazam. Come!"

He reached out for the child. Jane, who was on her feetnow, turned away from him.

"I shall bury the body," she said. "Send some men to diga grave outside the village."

Rokoff was anxious to have the thing over and get back tohis camp with his victim. He thought he saw in her apathy aresignation to her fate. Stepping outside the hut, he motionedher to follow him, and a moment later, with his men, heescorted Jane beyond the village, where beneath a great treethe blacks scooped a shallow grave.

Wrapping the tiny body in a blanket, Jane laid it tenderlyin the black hole, and, turning her head that she might notsee the mouldy earth falling upon the pitiful little bundle,she breathed a prayer beside the grave of the nameless waifthat had won its way to the innermost recesses of her heart.

Then, dry-eyed but suffering, she rose and followed the Russianthrough the Stygian blackness of the jungle, along the winding,leafy corridor that led from the village of M'ganwazam, theblack cannibal, to the camp of Nikolas Rokoff, the white fiend.

Beside them, in the impenetrable thickets that fringed the path,rising to arch above it and shut out the moon, the girl couldhear the stealthy, muffled footfalls of great beasts, and everround about them rose the deafening roars of hunting lions,until the earth trembled to the mighty sound.

The porters lighted torches now and waved them upon eitherhand to frighten off the beasts of prey. Rokoff urgedthem to greater speed, and from the quavering note in hisvoice Jane Clayton knew that he was weak from terror.

The sounds of the jungle night recalled most vividly thedays and nights that she had spent in a similar jungle withher forest god--with the fearless and unconquerable Tarzanof the Apes. Then there had been no thoughts of terror,though the jungle noises were new to her, and the roar of alion had seemed the most awe-inspiring sound upon the great earth.

How different would it be now if she knew that he wassomewhere there in the wilderness, seeking her! Then, indeed,would there be that for which to live, and every reasonto believe that succour was close at hand--but he was dead! It was incredible that it should be so.

There seemed no place in death for that great body andthose mighty thews. Had Rokoff been the one to tell her ofher lord's passing she would have known that he lied. There could be no reason, she thought, why M'ganwazam shouldhave deceived her. She did not know that the Russian hadtalked with the savage a few minutes before the chief hadcome to her with his tale.

At last they reached the rude boma that Rokoff's portershad thrown up round the Russian's camp. Here they foundall in turmoil. She did not know what it was all about,but she saw that Rokoff was very angry, and from bits ofconversation which she could translate she gleaned that therehad been further desertions while he had been absent, and thatthe deserters had taken the bulk of his food and ammunition.

When he had done venting his rage upon those who remainedhe returned to where Jane stood under guard of a coupleof his white sailors. He grasped her roughly by the armand started to drag her toward his tent. The girl struggledand fought to free herself, while the two sailors stood by,laughing at the rare treat.

Rokoff did not hesitate to use rough methods when he foundthat he was to have difficulty in carrying out his designs. Repeatedly he struck Jane Clayton in the face, until atlast, half-conscious, she was dragged within his tent.

Rokoff's boy had lighted the Russian's lamp, and now ata word from his master he made himself scarce. Jane hadsunk to the floor in the middle of the enclosure. Slowly hernumbed senses were returning to her and she was commencingto think very fast indeed. Quickly her eyes ran round theinterior of the tent, taking in every detail of its equipmentand contents.

Now the Russian was lifting her to her feet and attemptingto drag her to the camp cot that stood at one side of the tent. At his belt hung a heavy revolver. Jane Clayton's eyes rivetedthemselves upon it. Her palm itched to grasp the huge butt. She feigned again to swoon, but through her half-closed lidsshe waited her opportunity.

It came just as Rokoff was lifting her upon the cot. A noiseat the tent door behind him brought his head quickly aboutand away from the girl. The butt of the gun was not an inchfrom her hand. With a single, lightning-like move shesnatched the weapon from its holster, and at the same instantRokoff turned back toward her, realizing his peril.

She did not dare fire for fear the shot would bring hispeople about him, and with Rokoff dead she would fall intohands no better than his and to a fate probably even worsethan he alone could have imagined. The memory of the two bruteswho stood and laughed as Rokoff struck her was still vivid.

As the rage and fear-filled countenance of the Slav turnedtoward her Jane Clayton raised the heavy revolver high abovethe pasty face and with all her strength dealt the man a terrificblow between the eyes.

Without a sound he sank, limp and unconscious, to the ground. A moment later the girl stood beside him--for a moment atleast free from the menace of his lust.

Outside the tent she again heard the noise that had distractedRokoff's attention. What it was she did not know, but, fearingthe return of the servant and the discovery of her deed,she stepped quickly to the camp table upon which burned theoil lamp and extinguished the smudgy, evil-smelling flame.

In the total darkness of the interior she paused for a moment tocollect her wits and plan for the next step in her venture for freedom.

About her was a camp of enemies. Beyond these foes a blackwilderness of savage jungle peopled by hideous beasts of preyand still more hideous human beasts.

There was little or no chance that she could survive even a fewdays of the constant dangers that would confront her there;but the knowledge that she had already passed throughso many perils unscathed, and that somewhere out in thefaraway world a little child was doubtless at that very momentcrying for her, filled her with determination to makethe effort to accomplish the seemingly impossible and crossthat awful land of horror in search of the sea and the remotechance of succour she might find there.

Rokoff's tent stood almost exactly in the centre of the boma.Surrounding it were the tents and shelters of his whitecompanions and the natives of his safari. To pass throughthese and find egress through the boma seemed a task toofraught with insurmountable obstacles to warrant even theslightest consideration, and yet there was no other way.

To remain in the tent until she should be discovered wouldbe to set at naught all that she had risked to gain her freedom,and so with stealthy step and every sense alert she approachedthe back of the tent to set out upon the first stageof her adventure.

Groping along the rear of the canvas wall, she found thatthere was no opening there. Quickly she returned to the sideof the unconscious Russian. In his belt her groping fingerscame upon the hilt of a long hunting-knife, and with this shecut a hole in the back wall of the tent.

Silently she stepped without. To her immense relief shesaw that the camp was apparently asleep. In the dim andflickering light of the dying fires she saw but a single sentry,and he was dozing upon his haunches at the opposite side ofthe enclosure.

Keeping the tent between him and herself, she crossedbetween the small shelters of the native porters to theboma wall beyond.

Outside, in the darkness of the tangled jungle, she couldhear the roaring of lions, the laughing of hyenas, and thecountless, nameless noises of the midnight jungle.

For a moment she hesitated, trembling. The thought of theprowling beasts out there in the darkness was appalling. Then, with a sudden brave toss of her head, she attacked thethorny boma wall with her delicate hands. Torn and bleedingthough they were, she worked on breathlessly until she hadmade an opening through which she could worm her body,and at last she stood outside the enclosure.

Behind her lay a fate worse than death, at the hands ofhuman beings.

Before her lay an almost certain fate--but it was only death--sudden, merciful, and honourable death.

Without a tremor and without regret she darted away from the camp,and a moment later the mysterious jungle had closed about her.