lied 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 day found
the vitals of Kala, the great she-ape, and robbed the youth, Tarzan, of
the only mother he had ever known.

He recalled the murder of King by the rat-faced Snipes; the abandonment
of Professor Porter and his party by the mutineers of the ARROW; the
cruelty of the black warriors and women of Mbonga to their captives;
the petty jealousies of the civil and military officers of the West
Coast colony that had afforded him his first introduction to the
civilized world.

"MON DIEU!" he soliloquized, "but they are all alike. Cheating,
murdering, lying, fighting, and all for things that the beasts of the
jungle would not deign to possess--money to purchase the effeminate
pleasures of weaklings. And yet withal bound down by silly customs
that make them slaves to their unhappy lot while firm in the belief
that they be the lords of creation enjoying the only real pleasures of
existence. In the jungle one would scarcely stand supinely aside while
another took his mate. It is a silly world, an idiotic world, and
Tarzan of the Apes was a fool to renounce the freedom and the happiness
of his jungle to come into it."

Presently, as he sat there, the sudden feeling came over him that eyes
were watc