A moment later his keen ears caught the sound of voices. He halted and lowered the girl to her feet.
“If you cannot follow,” he said, “wait here. I do not wish him to escape. I will return for you. If you can follow on slowly, do so.” And then he left her and made his way cautiously forward toward the light and the voices. He heard Flora Hawkes moving directly behind him. It was evident that she could not bear the thought of being left alone again in the dark jungle. Almost simultaneously Tarzan heard a low whine a few paces to his right. “Jad-bal-ja,” he whispered in a low voice, “heel,” and the great black-maned lion crept close to him, and Flora Hawkes, stifling a scream, rushed to his side and grasped his arms.
“Silence,” he whispered; “Jad-bal-ja will not harm you.”
An instant later the three came to the edge of the ancient river bank, and through the tall grasses growing there looked down upon the little camp beneath.
Tarzan, to his consternation, saw a counterpart of himself standing before a little fire, while slowly approaching the man, with outstretched arms, was a woman, draped in flowing white. He heard her words; soft words of love and endearment, and at the sound of the voice and the scent spoor that a vagrant wind carried suddenly to his nostrils, a strange complex of emotion overwhelmed him—happiness, despair, rage, love, and hate.
He saw the man at the fire step forward with open arms to take the woman to his breast, and then Tarzan separated the grasses and stepped to the very edge of the embankment, his voice shattering the jungle with a single word.
“Jane!” he cried, and instantly the man and woman turned and looked up at him, where his figure was dimly revealed in the light of the campfire. At sight of him the man wheeled and raced for the jungle on the opposite side of the river, and then Tarzan leaped to the bottom of the wash below and ran toward the woman.
“Jane,” he cried, “it is you, it is you!”
The woman showed her bewilderment. She looked first at the retreating figure of the man she had been about to embrace and then turned her eyes toward Tarzan. She drew her fingers across her brow and looked back toward Esteban, but Esteban was no longer in sight. Then she took a faltering step toward the ape-man.
“My God,” she cried, “what does it mean? Who are you, and if you are Tarzan who was he?”