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Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
1 Belgian and Arab
2 On the Road to Opar
3 The Call of the Jungle
4 Prophecy and Fulfillment
5 The Altar of the Flaming God
6 The Arab Raid
7 The Jewel-Room of Opar
8 The Escape from Opar
9 The Theft of the Jewels
10 Achmet Zek Sees the Jewels
11 Tarzan Becomes a Beast Again
12 La Seeks Vengeance
13 Condemned to Torture and Death
14 A Priestess But Yet a Woman
15 The Flight of Werper
16 Tarzan Again Leads the Mangani
17 The Deadly Peril of Jane Clayton
18 The Fight For the Treasure
19 Jane Clayton and The Beasts of the Jungle
20 Jane Clayton Again a Prisoner
21 The Flight to the Jungle
22 Tarzan Recovers His Reason
23 A Night of Terror
24 Home
1
Belgian and Arab
Lieutenant Albert Werper had only the prestige of the name he had
dishonored to thank for his narrow escape from being cashiered.
At first he had been humbly thankful, too, that they had sent him
to this Godforsaken Congo post instead of court-martialing him,
as he had so justly deserved; but now six months of the monotony,
the frightful isolation and the loneliness had wrought a change. The
young man brooded continually over his fate. His days were filled
with morbid self-pity, which eventually engendered in his weak and
vacillating mind a hatred for those who had sent him here--for the
very men he had at first inwardly thanked for saving him from the
ignominy of degradation.
He regretted the gay life of Brussels as he never had regretted the
sins which had snatched him from that gayest of capitals, and as the
days passed he came to center his resentment upon the representative
in Congo land of the authority which had exiled him--his captain
and immediate superior.
This officer was a cold, taciturn man, inspiring little love in
those directly beneath him, yet respected and feared by the black
soldiers of his little command.
Werper was accustomed to sit for hours glaring at his superior
as the two sat upon the veranda of their common quarters, smoking
their evening cigarets in a silence which neither seemed desirous
of breaking. The senseless hatred of the lieutenant grew at
last into a form of mania. The captain's natural taciturnity he
distorted into a studied attempt to insult him because of his past
shortcomings. He imagined that his superior held him in contempt,
and so he chafed and fumed inwardly until one evening his madness
became suddenly homicidal. He fingered the butt of the revolver
at his hip, his eyes narrowed and his brows contracted. At last
he spoke.
"You have insulted me for the last time!" he cried, springing to
his feet. "I am an officer and a gentleman, and I shall put up
with it no longer without an accounting from you, you pig."
The captain, an expression of surprise upon his features, turned
toward his junior. He had seen men before with the jungle madness
upon them--the madness of solitude and unrestrained brooding, and
perhaps a touch of fever.
He rose and extended his hand to lay it upon the other's shoulder.
Quiet words of counsel were upon his lips; but they were never
spoken. Werper construed his superior's action into an attempt
to close with him. His revolver was on a level with the captain's
heart, and the latter had taken but a step when Werper pulled the
trigger. Without a moan the man sank to the rough planking of the
veranda, and as he fell the mists that had clouded Werper's brain
lifted, so that he saw himself and the deed that he had done in
the same light that those who must judge him would see them.
He heard excited exclamations from the quarters of the soldiers
and he heard men running in his direction. They would seize him,
and if they didn't kill him they would take him down the Congo to
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