The Return of Tarzan | Page 8

the midst of whose affairs his love
of fair play had thrust him. And then he came most unexpectedly upon
Rokoff and Paulvitch at a moment when of all others the two might
least appreciate his company.
They were standing on deck at a point which was temporarily deserted,
and as Tarzan came upon them they were in heated argument with a
woman. Tarzan noted that she was richly appareled, and that her
slender, well-modeled figure denoted youth; but as she was heavily

veiled he could not discern her features.
The men were standing on either side of her, and the backs of all were
toward Tarzan, so that he was quite close to them without their being
aware of his presence. He noticed that Rokoff seemed to be threatening,
the woman pleading; but they spoke in a strange tongue, and he could
only guess from appearances that the girl was afraid.
Rokoff's attitude was so distinctly filled with the threat of physical
violence that the ape-man paused for an instant just behind the trio,
instinctively sensing an atmosphere of danger. Scarcely had he
hesitated ere the man seized the woman roughly by the wrist, twisting it
as though to wring a promise from her through torture. What would
have happened next had Rokoff had his way we may only conjecture,
since he did not have his way at all. Instead, steel fingers gripped his
shoulder, and he was swung unceremoniously around, to meet the cold
gray eyes of the stranger who had thwarted him on the previous day.
"SAPRISTI!" screamed the infuriated Rokoff. "What do you mean?
Are you a fool that you thus again insult Nikolas Rokoff?"
"This is my answer to your note, monsieur," said Tarzan, in a low voice.
And then he hurled the fellow from him with such force that Rokoff
lunged sprawling against the rail.
"Name of a name!" shrieked Rokoff. "Pig, but you shall die for this,"
and, springing to his feet, he rushed upon Tarzan, tugging the
meanwhile to draw a revolver from his hip pocket. The girl shrank back
in terror.
"Nikolas!" she cried. "Do not--oh, do not do that. Quick, monsieur, fly,
or he will surely kill you!" But instead of flying Tarzan advanced to
meet the fellow. "Do not make a fool of yourself, monsieur," he said.
Rokoff, who was in a perfect frenzy of rage at the humiliation the
stranger had put upon him, had at last succeeded in drawing the
revolver. He had stopped, and now he deliberately raised it to Tarzan's
breast and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a futile click on an

empty chamber--the ape-man's hand shot out like the head of an angry
python; there was a quick wrench, and the revolver sailed far out across
the ship's rail, and dropped into the Atlantic.
For a moment the two men stood there facing one another. Rokoff had
regained his self-possession. He was the first to speak.
"Twice now has monsieur seen fit to interfere in matters which do not
concern him. Twice he has taken it upon himself to humiliate Nikolas
Rokoff. The first offense was overlooked on the assumption that
monsieur acted through ignorance, but this affair shall not be
overlooked. If monsieur does not know who Nikolas Rokoff is, this last
piece of effrontery will insure that monsieur later has good reason to
remember him."
"That you are a coward and a scoundrel, monsieur," replied Tarzan, "is
all that I care to know of you," and he turned to ask the girl if the man
had hurt her, but she had disappeared. Then, without even a glance
toward Rokoff and his companion, he continued his stroll along the
deck.
Tarzan could not but wonder what manner of conspiracy was on foot,
or what the scheme of the two men might be. There had been
something rather familiar about the appearance of the veiled woman to
whose rescue he had just come, but as he had not seen her face he could
not be sure that he had ever seen her before. The only thing about her
that he had particularly noticed was a ring of peculiar workmanship
upon a finger of the hand that Rokoff had seized, and he determined to
note the fingers of the women passengers he came upon thereafter, that
he might discover the identity of her whom Rokoff was persecuting,
and learn if the fellow had offered her further annoyance.
Tarzan had sought his deck chair, where he sat speculating on the
numerous instances of human cruelty, selfishness, and spite that had
fallen to his lot to witness since that day in the jungle four years since
that his eyes had first fallen upon a human being other than
himself--the sleek, black Kulonga, whose swift spear had that