it meant to her.

Six days later Captain Dufranne announced that they would sail early on
the morrow.

Jane would have begged for a further reprieve, had it not been that she
too had begun to believe that her forest lover would return no more.

In spite of herself she began to entertain doubts and fears. The
reasonableness of the arguments of these disinterested French officers
commenced to convince her against her will.

That he was a cannibal she would not believe, but that he was an
adopted member of some savage tribe at length seemed possible to her.

She would not admit that he could be dead. It was impossible to
believe that that perfect body, so filled with triumphant life, could
ever cease to harbor the vital spark--as soon believe that immortality
were dust.

As Jane permitted herself to harbor these thoughts, others equally
unwelcome forced themselves upon her.

If he belonged to some savage tribe he had a savage wife--a dozen of
them perhaps--and wild, half-caste children. The girl shuddered, and
when they told her that the cruiser would sail on the morrow she was
almost glad.

It was she, though, who suggested that arms, ammunition, supplies and
comforts be left behind in the cabin, ostensibly for that intangible
personality who had signed himself Tarzan of the Apes, and for D'Arnot
should he still be living, but really, she hoped, for her forest
god--even though his feet should prove of clay.

And at the last minute she left a message for him, to be transmitted by
Tarzan of the Apes.

She was the last to leave the cabin, returning on some trivial pretext
after the others had started for the boat.

She kneeled down beside the bed in which she had spent so many nights,
and offered up a prayer for the safety of her primeval man, and
crushing his locket to her lips she murmured:

"I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not
believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there
been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you--forever."

Chapter XXV

The Outpost of the World

With the report of his gun D'Arnot saw the door fly open and the figure
of a man pitch headlong within onto the cabin floor.

The Frenchman in his panic raised his gun to fire again into the
prostrate form, but suddenly in the half dusk of the open door he saw
that the man was white and in another instant realized that he had shot
his friend and protect