JAN OF THE JUNGLE & Its Sequel, Jan in India. Otis Adelbert Kline
an enraged animal—then charged.
The two men were bending over Chicma as she thrashed on the ground, attempting to put ropes on her. Four others, three with brown skins and one with a bushy yellow beard, were running toward them carrying nets and ropes. Paying no heed to these reinforcements, Jan leaped on the back of the man nearest him—the swarthy fellow with the little mustache—and growling and snarling like a jungle beast, attacked him with teeth and nails.
But the yellow-bearded giant ran up behind him and pulled him off.
Quick as a flash, Jan turned on this new enemy and sank his teeth into the hairy forearm. With an exclamation of pain and anger, the big man jabbed a huge fist into the boy’s midriff, causing him to let go his hold and gasp for breath. The fist flashed out a second time, colliding with his jaw, and Jan’s whirling senses left him.
Jan did not know when he was bundled aboard the ship, nor could he know that his jailer of sixteen years, Dr. Bracken, had resumed his trailing, after daybreak, just a bit too late. The signs of struggle and capture were plain enough, and Bracken furiously followed the tracks down to the shore, where the marks of a boat’s prow were etched deep in the sand. Looking out across the bay he saw a small schooner flying the flag of Venezuela. He could not make out her name. Even as he looked, her sails were raised and her anchor hoisted. Then slowly, gracefully, the vessel sailed around the point and southward. The half- maddened doctor knew that for the time being, at least, his vengeful pursuit was balked.
When Jan recovered consciousness once more, he was in a strange half-dark place of queer sights, sounds, smells and motions. There was a thick collar around his neck, fastened by a heavy chain to a large ring in the planking behind him. A little way from him; and trying to reach him, but held by her chain in a similar manner to a ring on the opposite side of the space they occupied, was Chicma.
She called softly to him, and when he answered, seemed satisfied by the assurance that he was alive, and quit tugging at her chain.
Through the cracks between the boards on, which he lay, and which constantly lurched under him with a motion that gave Jan a most unpleasant feeling, he could hear the swishing of bilge water, which stank abominably. Some mildewed excelsior had been scattered over the planking, and the sour odor of this only increased the wave of nausea that swept over him.
For hours that seemed interminable, he lay there, constantly swayed by the lurching of the ship, and suffering in silence.
Then a hatch was raised there was the sound of voices and footsteps descending the ladder, and the swarthy man with the little mustache, came through the door. Just behind him was the huge individual with the yellow beard.
Jan instinctively hated all men with beards because Dr. Bracken was bearded. And to top this instinctive dislike was the fact that this particular bearded man had injured him.
The two men were talking. But Jan, of course, was unable to understand them. The fact that they were looking at him, however, was enough. He growled menacingly.
“I’ll be hanged if that kid ain’t wilder than the chimpanzee,” said Jake Grubb. He walked closer to Jan and held out a hand placatingly. “Come here, boy. What’s yer name?”
Jan bared his teeth with a fierce snarl, and snapped at the hand which was hastily withdrawn.
“Blood of the devil!” exclaimed Santos with mock-consternation. “Look out, señor. You will be devoured.”
“You know, captain, I b’lieve this kid’ll make a better drawin’ card than the ape,” said Grubb. “We kin show ‘em in a cage together—the African wild man and the African ape. We’ll have to make the boy some kind of a breech clout or skirt out of hide.”
“So amigo? And who weel persuade heem to wear it?”
“I’ll make him wear it or break his back,” replied Grubb.
Chapter 5. The Rope’s End
For many hours, Jan lay on the floor, rising only to drink at intervals from a pan of water which the men had gingerly slid into his cage.
But the sea grew calmer, the rocking of the craft became less violent and gradually his seasickness left him. And he grew very hungry.
Although Chicma had been fed several times during this period, Jan’s original ration remained untouched; and he was given nothing more to eat. A huge black man—the one who had helped to capture the chimpanzee— had come in once and refilled his water pan for him. Jan had growled at this giant as he had at the others, but the man had talked softly, soothingly, to him, and had been very deliberate in his movements, so the boy had made no attempt to molest him as he poured the water into the pan from the pitcher.
With his appetite back and his sickness gone, Jan drank the last of the water which the black giant had left for him. Then he ate the bananas set before him—a fruit of which he was very fond. But the cold chili burned him with its pepper, and he quickly spat out the first mouthful. But the smell of the meat in it urged him on. Scooping up another mouthful, he chewed it rapidly, and swallowed it. This mouthful seemed to bite him a little, but not nearly so much as the first. Quickly he finished the contents of the bowl.
His stomach filled, Jan was stretching out in his excelsior when he heard the voices of men descending the ladder.
Tensely alert, he sat up as two men entered the room. The foremost was the yellow-bearded white man he had learned to dislike so intensely. Behind him walked the giant Negro. The white man carried a short stout rope and a roll of leather. The Negro carried a pitcher, with which he refilled the pans of Chicma and Jan while the first mate unrolled his leather bundle.
“Now, Borno,” said Grubb, “I’ll show you how to dress up this kind. Might have to dress him down before I dress him up, but that’s all in a day’s work.”
“Oui, m’sieu’,” acquiesced Borno, who was a Haitian Negro, and actually though not nominally the second mate of the Santa Margarita. “Oui, m’sieu’, I watch.”
The leather which Grubb had unrolled was a short skirt, slightly resembling a Highlander’s kilts, and attached to a stout belt. Holding this spread out in his two huge hands, he slowly advanced toward Jan, who backed away with a snarl.
“Needn’t to act thataway. Ain’t goin’ to hurt ye none,” said Grubb. But his actions belied his words, for he made a sudden spring, clasping the belt around the boy’s waist, and lifting him from the floor.
Squirming, kicking, clawing, Jan was soon dangling with the belt beneath his armpits, still unbuckled. With cat-like quickness, he doubled up and bit clear through one of Grubb’s hands.
Roaring a blood-curdling oath, the first mate dropped him and backed away, nursing his wounded hand. Then, flinging down the leather skirt, he caught up the rope he had brought.
Jan did not cower as the big man advanced toward him, but strained at his chain in his endeavor to reach his enemy. Standing just out of his reach, the mate brought down the end of the rope with a skill that came of long practice, and a little stream of blood trickled downward, from the welt it made in Jan’s tender, sunburned skin.
Again and again he swung the cruel rope, blood spurting from a new welt at each blow. But not so much as the slightest whimper escaped the lips of Jan. Instead, he strained at his collar until it nearly choked him in his attempts to reach his cruel foe. And in his glittering eyes was the light of a killing frenzy.
Aroused by this mistreatment of her foster child, and by the smell of blood, Chicma also was tugging at her chain, endeavoring to go to the boy’s rescue while voicing her anger in forceful chimpanzee invective, and gnashing her powerful teeth until her pendulous lips and hairy chest were flecked with saliva.
Borno watched the proceedings calmly at first, but when the body of the boy was a mass of bloody welts and his spirit remained unbroken, his eyes glittered with