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Chapter XV - Mysterious Footprints

As the British plane piloted by Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick rose above

the jungle wilderness where Bertha Kircher's life had so often been upon the

point of extinction, and sped toward the east, the girl felt a sudden contraction of

the muscles of her throat. She tried very hard to swallow something that was not

there. It seemed strange to her that she should feel regret in leaving behind her

such hideous perils, and yet it was plain to her that such was the fact, for she

was also leaving behind something beside the dangers that had menaced her--a

unique figure that had entered her life, and for which she felt an unaccountable

attraction.

Before her in the pilot's seat sat an English officer and gentleman whom, she

knew, loved her, and yet she dared to feel regret in his company at leaving the

stamping ground of a wild beast!

Lieutenant Smith-Oldwick, on his part, was in the seventh heaven of elation. He

was in possession again of his beloved ship, he was flying swiftly in the direction

of his comrades and his duty, and with him was the woman he loved. The fly in

the ointment, however, was the accusation Tarzan had made against this woman.

He had said that she was a German, and a spy, and from the heights of bliss the

English officer was occasionally plunged to the depths of despair in

contemplation of the inevitable, were the ape-man's charges to prove true. He

found himself torn between sentiments of love and honor. On the one hand he

could not surrender the woman he loved to the certain fate that must be meted

out to her if she were in truth an enemy spy, while on the other it would be

equally impossible for him as an Englishman and an officer to give her aid or

protection.

The young man contented himself therefore with repeated mental denials of her

guilt. He tried to convince himself that Tarzan was mistaken, and when he

conjured upon the screen of recollection the face of the girl behind him, he was

doubly reassured that those lines of sweet femininity and character, those clear

and honest eyes, could not belong to one of the hated alien race.

And so they sped toward the east, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Below them

they saw the dense vegetation of the jungle give place to the scantier growth upon

the hillside, and then before them there spread the wide expanse of arid

wastelands marked by the deep scarring of the narrow gorges that long-gone

rivers had cut there in some forgotten age.

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Tarzan the Untamed