"Thanks for putting it that way. Nevertheless, I—" He stopped, listening. "Someone is coming," he said, and drew the girl back into the concealment of the underbrush.
From where they were hidden, they had a clear view back along the trail for a good fifty yards before it curved away from their line of sight. Presently they heard voices more distinctly. "Japs," whispered Corrie. She took a handful of arrows from the quiver at her back and fitted one to her bow. Jerry grinned and followed her example.
A moment later, two Jap soldiers strolled carelessly into view. Their rifles were slung across their backs. They had nothing to fear in this direction—they thought. They had made a token gesture of obeying their officer's instructions to search back along the trail for the three missing whites, whom they had been none too anxious to discover waiting in ambush for them. They would loaf slowly back to camp and report that they had made a thorough search.
Corrie leaned closer to Jerry and whispered, "You take the one on the left. I'll take the other." Jerry nodded and raised his bow.
"Let 'em come to within twenty feet," he said. "When I say now, we'll fire together."
They waited. The Japs were approaching very slowly, jabbering as though they had something worthwhile to say.
"Monkey talk," said Jerry.
"S-sh!" cautioned the girl. She stood with her bow drawn, the feathers of the arrow at her right ear. Jerry glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. Joan of Sumatra, he thought. The Japs were approaching the dead line.
"Now!" said Jerry. Two bow strings twanged simultaneously. Corrie's target pitched forward with an arrow through the heart. Jerry's aim had not been so true. His victim clutched at the shaft sunk deep in his throat.
Jerry jumped into the trail, and the wounded Jap tried to unsling his rifle. He had almost succeeded when Jerry struck him a terrific blow on the chin. He went down, and the pilot leaped upon him with drawn knife. Twice he drove the blade into the man's heart. The fellow twitched convulsively and lay still.
Jerry looked up to see Corrie disentangling the slung rifle from the body of the other Jap. He saw her stand above her victim like an avenging goddess. Three times she drove the bayonet into the breast of the soldier. The American watched the girl's face. It was not distorted by rage or hate or vengeance. It was illumined by a divine light of exaltation.
She turned toward Jerry. "That is what I saw them do to my father. I feel happier now. I only wish that he had been alive."
"You are magnificent," said Jerry.
They took possession of the other rifle and the belts and ammunition of the dead men. Then Jerry dragged the bodies into the underbrush. Corrie helped him.
"You can cut a notch in your shootin' iron, woman," said Jerry, grinning. "You have killed your man."
"I have not killed a man," contradicted the girl. "I have killed a Jap."
"'Haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,'" quoted Jerry.
"You think a woman should not hate," said Corrie. "You could never like a woman who hated."
"I like you," said Jerry gently, solemnly.
"And I like you, Jerry. You have been so very fine, all of you. You haven't made me feel like a girl, but like a man among men."
"God forbid!" exclaimed Jerry, and they both laughed.
"For you, Jerry, I shall stop hating—as soon as I have killed all the Japs in the world."
Jerry smiled back at her. "A regular Avenging Angel," he said. "Let's see —who were The Avenging Angels?"
"I don't know," said Corrie. "I've never met any angels."
"Now I remember," said Jerry. "A long while ago there was an association of Mormons, the Danite Band. They were known as The Avenging Angels."
"The Mormons are the people who have a lot of wives, aren't they? Are you a Mormon?"
"Perish the thought. I'm not that courageous. Neither are the present day Mormons. Just imagine being married to a WAC sergeant, a welder, and a steamfitter!"
"And an Avenging Angel?" laughed Corrie.
He didn't answer. He just looked at her, and Corrie wished that she had not said it. Or did she wish that she had not said it?
Tarzan, swinging through the trees overlooking the trail, stopped suddenly and froze into immobility. Ahead of him he saw a man squatting on a platform built in a tree that gave a view of the trail for some distance in the direction from which Tarzan had come. The man was heavily bearded and heavily armed. He was a white man. Evidently he was a sentry watching a trail along which an enemy might approach.
Tarzan moved cautiously away from the trail. Had he not been fully aware of the insensibility of civilized man he would have marvelled that the fellow had not noted his approach. The stupidest of the beasts would have heard him or smelled him or seen him.
Making a detour, he circled the sentry; and a minute or two later came to the edge of a small mountain meadow and looked down upon a rude and untidy camp. A score or so of men were lying around in the shade of trees. A bottle passed from hand to hand among them, or from mouth to mouth. Drinking with them were a number of women. Most of these appeared to be Eurasians. With a single exception, the men were heavily bearded. This was a young man who sat with them, taking an occasional pull at the bottle. The men carried pistols and knives, and each had a rifle close at hand. It was not a nice looking company.
Tarzan decided that the less he had to do with these people the better. And then the branch on which he sat snapped suddenly, and he fell to the ground within a hundred feet of them. His head struck something hard, and he lost consciousness.
When he came to he was lying beneath a tree, his wrists and ankles bound. Men and women were squatting or standing around him. When they saw that he had regained consciousness, one of the men spoke to him in Dutch. Tarzan understood him, but he shook his head as though he did not.
The fellow had asked him who he was and what he had been doing spying on them. Another tried French, which was the first spoken language of civilized man that he had learned; but he still shook his head. The young man tried English. Tarzan pretended that he did not understand; and addressed them in Swahili, the language of a Mohammedan Bantu people of Zanzibar and the East coast of Africa, knowing that they would not understand it.
"Sounds like Japanese," said one of the men.
"It ain't though," said one who understood that language.
"Maybe it's Chinese," suggested another.
"He looks about as much like a Chink as you do," said the first speaker.
"Maybe he's a wild man. No clothes, bow and arrows. Fell out of a tree like a monkey."
"He's a damned spy."
"What good's a spy who can't talk any civilized language?"
They thought this over, and it seemed to remove their suspicion that their prisoner might be a spy, at least for the moment. They had more important business to attend to, as was soon demonstrated.
"Oh, to hell with him," said a bleary-eyed giant. "I'm getting dry."
He walked back in the direction of the trees beneath which they had been lolling—in the direction of the trees and the bottle—and the others followed. All but the young man with the smooth face. He still squatted near Tarzan, his back toward his retreating companions. When they were at a safer distance and their attention held by the bottle, he spoke. He spoke in a low whisper and in English.
"I am sure that you are either an American or an Englishman," he said. "Possibly one of the Americans from the bomber that was shot down some time ago. If you are, you can trust me. I am practically a prisoner here myself. But don't let them see you talking to me. If you decide that you can trust me, you can make some sign that you understand me.