He
would tell them.
In his tree he had constructed a rude shelter of leaves and
boughs, beneath which, protected from the rain, he had
placed the few treasures brought from the cabin. Among
these were some pencils.
He took one, and beneath Jane Porter's signature he wrote:
I am Tarzan of the Apes
He thought that would be sufficient. Later he would return
the letter to the cabin.
In the matter of food, thought Tarzan, they had no need to
worry--he would provide, and he did.
The next morning Jane found her missing letter in the
exact spot from which it had disappeared two nights before.
She was mystified; but when she saw the printed words beneath
her signature, she felt a cold, clammy chill run up her
spine. She showed the letter, or rather the last sheet
with the signature, to Clayton.
"And to think," she said, "that uncanny thing was probably
watching me all the time that I was writing--oo! It makes me
shudder just to think of it."
"But he must be friendly," reassured Clayton, "for he has
returned your letter, nor did he offer to harm you, and unless
I am mistaken he left a very substantial memento of his
friendship outside the cabin door last night, for I just found
the carcass of a wild boar there as I came out."
From then on scarcely a day passed that did not bring its
offering of game or other food. Sometimes it was a young
deer, again a quantity of strange, cooked food--cassava
cakes pilfered from the village of Mbonga--or a boar, or
leopard, and once a lion.
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