The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Son of Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Son of Tarzan

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Release Date: June 23, 2008 [EBook #90]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF TARZAN ***

The Son Of Tarzan

By

Edgar Rice Burroughs

To Hulbert Burroughs

Chapter 1

The long boat of the Marjorie W. was floating down the broad Ugambi
with ebb tide and current. Her crew were lazily enjoying this respite
from the arduous labor of rowing up stream. Three miles below them lay
the Marjorie W. herself, quite ready to sail so soon as they should
have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently
the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping
to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a
cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange
apparition of a man.

"Wot the 'ell?" ejaculated one of the crew.

"A white man!" muttered the mate, and then: "Man the oars, boys, and
we'll just pull over an' see what he wants."

When they came close to the shore they saw an emaciated creature with
scant white locks tangled and matted. The thin, bent body was naked
but for a loin cloth. Tears were rolling down the sunken pock-marked
cheeks. The man jabbered at them in a strange tongue.

"Rooshun," hazarded the mate. "Savvy English?" he called to the man.

He did, and in that tongue, brokenly and haltingly, as though it had
been many years since he had used it, he begged them to take him with
them away from this awful country. Once on board the Marjorie W. the
stranger told his rescuers a pitiful tale of privation, hardships, and
torture, extending over a period of ten years. How he happened to have
come to Africa he did not tell them, leaving them to assume he had
forgotten the incidents of his life prior to the frightful ordeals that
had wrecked him mentally and physically. He did not even tell them his
true name, and so they knew him only as Michael Sabrov, nor was there
any resemblance between this sorry wreck and the virile, though
unpr