JAN OF THE JUNGLE & Its Sequel, Jan in India. Otis Adelbert Kline
without food until late in the afternoon, when they came to the lonely cabin of one of the dwellers in the swamp. After reconnoitering to make sure that there was no one about they raided a garden which yielded sweet potatoes, celery, lettuce and tomatoes, with some luscious grapefruit off a nearby tree for dessert.
When they had eaten their fill, they resumed their journey, traveling toward the reddening disk of the setting sun. But they had not gone far when there came to the ears of Jan a strange and fearful sound. It seemed to him an incongruous combination of whispering and roaring, and his active young imagination immediately set to work to picture the monster that could make so voluminous and terrible a sound.
He hesitated, fearful of venturing farther in the direction of the noise but as Chicma advanced unperturbed, and as he now felt himself braver and greater than she, he marched on beside her with no outward sign of the trepidation he felt.
It was not long before they came to what was to Jan a most amazing sight. It was a broad, curved beach of gleaming white sand with white-crested waves rolling in, dashing a fine spray high in the air and leaving a line of silvery spume at the point where they receded.
Chicma walked out upon the smooth white sand, and turned to the left. Jan, perturbed but resolute, walked beside her. The sand felt soft and pleasant to his injured feet, and it was not long before he gathered sufficient courage to walk out into the spume. This felt exceptionally pleasant until the salt began to smart his wounds, whereupon he imagined that the sea was becoming angry with him, and quickly retreated to the dry sands.
The sun was just disappearing into the evening mists with a last blaze of blood-red glory when they arrived at the bank of a small rivulet that flowed into the Gulf. A few coconut trees adorned its banks, and Chicma instantly climbed one of these, throwing a half dozen large nuts to the ground. She then descended and Jan, always quick to mimic followed her example as she tore the fibrous covering with her sharp teeth.
When she had uncovered the end of the inner shell she broke this open with a stone and eagerly drank the liquid it contained. Jan also picked up a stone and bashed in the end of his coconut. He tasted the milk gingerly at first, then drained it with great relish. He was discovering more good things all the time in this strange outer world which had been withheld from him for so long.
But there was more to come, for Chicma, removing more of the fibrous outer wrapping, proceeded to break off pieces of the inner shell and devour the white, tasty nut meat that adhered to it. Jan did likewise, and found another delight.
But Chicma did not open a second nut, for there suddenly sounded above the roar of the surf, an ominous rumble accompanied by a white flash, far out over the Gulf. Calling Jan to follow her, the chimpanzee hurried into the thickest part of the underbrush in the coconut grove, and there crouched, shivering with her fear of the lightning.
Jan could not understand this fear. Unperturbed, he looked out over the Gulf in the direction of the noise. The rumblings were becoming louder, and the flashes brighter. The last red glow of sunset was being swallowed up by a tumbling mass of blue-black clouds. But these things were, to him, rather commonplace, for he had often seen approaching thunder clouds through the high windows of the menagerie, and several times had viewed them from the stockade.
What principally attracted his attention was a most puzzling thing on the surface of the water. It appeared to have a pair of large, white wings, placed one in front of the other, which did not flap like those of birds, but were held more or less rigidly, straight up in the air. He was astonished to see one of the wings swiftly disappear, followed in a moment by the disappearance of the other. On the back of the thing were tiny moving creatures that looked, at a distance, to be much like Cruel One.
Jan did, not know that what he had seen was not an animal, but a Venezuelan schooner, which had scurried to anchor behind a sheltering point of land and then lowered sail, in order to escape the fury of the coming storm. Nor had he any means of knowing that one of the figures on the deck had been scanning the shore with binoculars and had seen both Jan and Chicma—a naked boy and an African ape—here on the western coast of Florida.
A short time after Jan crouched down beside the cowering Chicma, the storm broke.
Captain Francesco Santos, commander and owner of the schooner Santa Margarita, brushed back the straggling hairs of his small, coal-black mustache, inserted a cigarette between his coarse lips, and lit it.
Filling his lungs with tobacco smoke, he exhaled slowly and as he did so, addressed Jake Grubb, his powerful, blond bearded first mate, who was peering at the shore through a pair of binoculars.
“Por Dios, Señor Grubb! You seem to ‘ave locate’ sometheeng that ees of more interest than the coming storm. May I ‘ave the look, also?”
“I seen it, but I don’t believe it,” replied Grubb, handing his binoculars to Santos.
Santos turned the glass in the direction indicated, and focused it to suit his vision.
“Son of wan gun, señor!” he exclaimed. “It ees not the Bacardi, for I see them also, and me, I drank tequila.”
“What are they a doin’ now, captain?”
“The ape ees just take what you call the duck into the bushes. The boy ees stand there and look at us. The ape ees scared, but that boy, he’s not afraid of notheeng, I tal you.”
A particularly loud clap, of thunder, followed by the spatter of raindrops and a violent tilting of the schooner as the storm broke, sent both men scurrying for cover. Once inside the cabin, Santos lit another cigarette and got out his bottle of tequila, while Grubb resorted to his pipe and his rum.
“What would you think, captain, if I told you I had an idea for makin’ some easy money?” asked Grubb, refilling his glass and sucking at his pipe.
“I would be delight’, señor, if I, Francesco Santos, could thereby make what you call the honest penny.”
“I believe,” said Grubb, “in takin’ what the good Lord provides. Over there, hidin’ in the bushes, is some kind of a big African ape. It may be a gorilla or it may be a chimpanzee, but I know from its looks that it’s one or the other. It must have got away from some circus, because apes like that don’t run wild anywheres except in Africa. People were payin’ good money to see that critter, and they’ll do it again. I traveled with a street carnival for one season, and barked on a side-show door with a circus, so I know something about the racket. If we catch that ape, bring it aboard, and build a cage for it, we kin turn this schooner into a showboat. Or we kin buy a tent, travel from port to port in ease and style, and stay in each place as long as the dough rolls in. There ain’t no limit to where we kin go, what we kin do, or how much we kin make.”
“Carramba! That sound pretty good, amigo. One hour before daylight, then, we leave for the shore weeth nets and ropes. I dreenk to our success amigo.”
“Down the hatch,” replied Grubb, as he tossed off his drink.
Chapter 4. Captured
Jan was awakened by a low cry of warning from Chicma. Then he heard the sound of human voices. The darkness had passed, and a pink glow heralded the coming of the sun.
The voices grew louder—closer, and there were crashing sounds in the underbrush all around them. As these drew nearer, Chicma, calling softly to the boy to follow, made a sudden rush to break through the narrowing circle.
As she leaped out of the bushes, the ape tried to dart between two men who stood about ten feet apart. One was a swarthy fellow with a small mustache. The other was jet black, and gigantic in stature. But as she ran forward, the two suddenly lifted a net which they had been trailing between them, and in a moment she was struggling in its meshes which the two men drew tighter and tighter around her.
Bewildered by the strange sights and sounds, Jan dashed off into the undergrowth, but when he saw that Chicma had been caught he paused, hoping