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Nowhere in his flight had he seen aught of Jane Clayton. Not once had his eyes
rested upon her since that moment at the river's brim his hand had closed upon
the rope attached to the bow of her dugout and he had believed her safely in his
power again, only to be thwarted an instant later as the girl snatched up a heavy
express rifle from the bottom of the craft and levelled it full at his breast.
Quickly he had dropped the rope then and seen her float away beyond his reach,
but a moment later he had been racing up-stream toward a little tributary in the
mouth of which was hidden the canoe in which he and his party had come thus
far upon their journey in pursuit of the girl and Anderssen.
What had become of her?
There seemed little doubt in the Russian's mind, however, but that she had been
captured by warriors from one of the several villages she would have been
compelled to pass on her way down to the sea. Well, he was at least rid of most
of his human enemies.
But at that he would gladly have had them all back in the land of the living could
he thus have been freed from the menace of the frightful creatures who pursued
him with awful relentlessness, screaming and growling at him every time they
came within sight of him. The one that filled him with the greatest terror was the
panther--the flaming-eyed, devil-faced panther whose grinning jaws gaped wide at
him by day, and whose fiery orbs gleamed wickedly out across the water from the
Cimmerian blackness of the jungle nights.
The sight of the mouth of the Ugambi filled Rokoff with renewed hope, for there,
upon the yellow waters of the bay, floated the Kincaid at anchor. He had sent the
little steamer away to coal while he had gone up the river, leaving Paulvitch in
charge of her, and he could have cried aloud in his relief as he saw that she had
returned in time to save him.
Frantically he alternately paddled furiously toward her and rose to his feet waving
his paddle and crying aloud in an attempt to attract the attention of those on
board. But loud as he screamed his cries awakened no answering challenge from
the deck of the silent craft.
Upon the shore behind him a hurried backward glance revealed the presence of
the snarling pack. Even now, he thought, these manlike devils might yet find a
way to reach him even upon the deck of the steamer unless there were those
there to repel them with firearms.
What could have happened to those he had left upon the Kincaid? Where was
Paulvitch? Could it be that the vessel was deserted, and that, after all, he was
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