's
sides, the whirring of the propeller, the throbbing of the engines,
drowned the almost soundless approach of the two.

They were quite close to him now, and crouching low, like tacklers on a
gridiron. One of them raised his hand and lowered it, as though
counting off seconds--one--two--three! As one man the two leaped for
their victim. Each grasped a leg, and before Tarzan of the Apes,
lightning though he was, could turn to save himself he had been pitched
over the low rail and was falling into the Atlantic.

Hazel Strong was looking from her darkened port across the dark sea.
Suddenly a body shot past her eyes from the deck above. It dropped so
quickly into the dark waters below that she could not be sure of what
it was--it might have been a man, she could not say. She listened for
some outcry from above--for the always-fearsome call, "Man overboard!"
but it did not come. All was silence on the ship above--all was
silence in the sea below.

The girl decided that she had but seen a bundle of refuse thrown
overboard by one of the ship's crew, and a moment later sought her
berth.

Chapter 13

The Wreck of the "Lady Alice"

The next morning at breakfast Tarzan's place was vacant. Miss Strong
was mildly curious, for Mr. Caldwell had always made it a point to wait
that he might breakfast with her and her mother. As she was sitting on
deck later Monsieur Thuran paused to exchange a half dozen pleasant
words with her. He seemed in most excellent spirits--his manner was
the extreme of affability. As he passed on Miss Strong thought what a
very delightful man was Monsieur Thuran.

The day dragged heavily. She missed the quiet companionship of Mr.
Caldwell--there had been something about him that had made the girl
like him from the first; he had talked so entertainingly of the places
he had seen--the peoples and their customs--the wild beasts; and he had
always had a droll way of drawing striking comparisons between savage
animals and civilized men that showed a considerable knowledge of the
former, and a keen, though somewhat cynical, estimate of the latter.

When Monsieur Thuran stopped again to chat with her in the afternoon
she welcomed the break in the day's monotony. But she had begun to
become seriously concerned in Mr. Caldwell's continued absence;
somehow she constantly associated it with the start she had had the
night before, when the dark object fell past her port into the sea.
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