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Chapter 18 - Paulvitch Plots Revenge
As Jane and Tarzan stood upon the vessel's deck recounting to one another the
details of the various adventures through which each had passed since they had
parted in their London home, there glared at them from beneath scowling brows a
hidden watcher upon the shore.
Through the man's brain passed plan after plan whereby he might thwart the
escape of the Englishman and his wife, for so long as the vital spark remained
within the vindictive brain of Alexander Paulvitch none who had aroused the
enmity of the Russian might be entirely safe.
Plan after plan he formed only to discard each either as impracticable, or
unworthy the vengeance his wrongs demanded. So warped by faulty reasoning
was the criminal mind of Rokoff's lieutenant that he could not grasp the real
truth of that which lay between himself and the ape-man and see that always the
fault had been, not with the English lord, but with himself and his confederate.
And at the rejection of each new scheme Paulvitch arrived always at the same
conclusion--that he could accomplish naught while half the breadth of the
Ugambi separated him from the object of his hatred.
But how was he to span the crocodile-infested waters? There was no canoe
nearer than the Mosula village, and Paulvitch was none too sure that the Kincaid
would still be at anchor in the river when he returned should he take the time to
traverse the jungle to the distant village and return with a canoe. Yet there was
no other way, and so, convinced that thus alone might he hope to reach his prey,
Paulvitch, with a parting scowl at the two figures upon the Kincaid's deck, turned
away from the river.
Hastening through the dense jungle, his mind centred upon his one fetich--
revenge--the Russian forgot even his terror of the savage world through which he
moved.
Baffled and beaten at every turn of Fortune's wheel, reacted upon time after time
by his own malign plotting, the principal victim of his own criminality, Paulvitch
was yet so blind as to imagine that his greatest happiness lay in a continuation of
the plottings and schemings which had ever brought him and Rokoff to disaster,
and the latter finally to a hideous death.
As the Russian stumbled on through the jungle toward the Mosula village there
presently crystallized within his brain a plan which seemed more feasible than
any that he had as yet considered.
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