Chapter 14 return home

After Taishan fell into the sea, my first thought was to swim away from the ship as soon as possible to avoid being injured by the propeller or other dangers.He knows who got him into the corner.He is a good swimmer, and the slight swing of his hands is enough to keep his body afloat.He felt very regretful that he was so easily plotted by Zhukov. He floated on the water for a while, watching helplessly as the ship receded and the lights faded among the waves.It never occurred to him to call for help. He'd never been less "helpful" in his life, so it's no surprise that he didn't think about it in a pinch.He always relied on his courage and wit to overcome difficulties.Besides, no one would help him except Carla, who had reached out to him in his peril while alive.Just like that, by the time he remembered to call for help, it was too late.

Taishan understood that the possibility of being rescued in a boat was probably not even one in a hundred thousand, and the hope of swimming to land was even slimmer.So he decided, without giving up both possibilities, to swim slowly towards the coastline.His steamer was probably closer to the mainland than he reckoned. He paddled the water easily, and his well-developed muscles were far from fatigue! He swam east in the direction pointed by the starlight.Later, I found that the shoes on my feet were quite heavy and hindered me when I swam, so I took them off altogether.He took off his pants again.If it wasn't for the important information in his pocket, he would have even taken off his shirt.He reached into his pocket and fumbled, and was very surprised to find that the information had long since disappeared.

Now he understands.The reason why Zhukov pushed him into the sea was not just for revenge, the Russian also wanted to get back the information that he had snatched from him in Bushada.Cursing under his breath, Tarzan took off his coat and shirt and let them sink into the Atlantic together.After a while, he took off all his clothes and swam east freely. The first rays of morning light hid the stars in the sky.Not far ahead, there was a dark thing standing on the sea.Taishan swam forward vigorously, and found that it was the wreckage of a large ship, and the waves kept beating the bottom of the ship.Taishan climbed onto the wrecked boat, ready to wait until the sky was bright before making a decision.He didn't want to stay here starving and thirsty to die.If he had to die, he was willing to die in the struggle for his own existence.

The sea was very calm, the broken boat was shaking gently, Taishan kept swimming, and he hadn't closed his eyes for 24 hours.The gentle rocking of the wreck was a comfort.He curled up on the slippery board, and soon fell asleep. In the morning, the hot sun woke him up.Thirst was his first feeling, and it was almost unbearable.However, after a while, the two things he discovered at the same time made him forget his dry mouth and tongue in surprise. The first discovery was that there was a pile of planks, masts, and the like floating next to the wreckage of the large ship.In the midst of these things, there was a lifeboat, with its bottom turned upside down, bouncing up and down.The second discovery is that the shadow of land looms on the horizon to the east.

Tarzan plunged into the water, skirted the wreck of the ship, and swam to the small boat.Once immersed in the cool sea water, he felt full of strength again.He hauled the skiff alongside the wreck, and with great difficulty lifted it onto the slippery bottom of the big ship.After putting it away, he checked it carefully and found that the boat was intact. After a while, he put the boat back into the sea, found a few boards that could be used as paddles from the wreckage of the big ship, and quickly went to the distant place. Beach paddling. By late afternoon he was so close to the shore that he could see the land clearly and make out the outline of the shoreline.There seemed to be a small harbor blocked by reefs, and the entrance of the small harbor was facing the bow of the ship.The forested hills to the north looked familiar.Had fate brought him back to the dear jungle again?By the time the boat sailed into the harbour, the last cloud of doubt disappeared without a trace.On the coast in front of him, under the shade of the primeval forest, stands his cabin!The cottage built by his father, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, before he was born!

Taishan paddled vigorously with his two muscular arms, and the boat sailed quickly towards the coast.As soon as the bow of the boat touched the golden sand, Tarzan stepped onto the beach, his heart beating violently with joy.He looked around, and the long-familiar scenery appeared in front of his eyes again: wooden houses, beaches, streams, thickets, and dark, impenetrable virgin forests.Countless birds with gorgeous feathers are flying in the air, and vines with gorgeous flowers hang down from the towering trees, adorning the jungle with festoons. Tarzan the Ape is back in his jungle, and he wants to let the whole world know the good news!Then, raising his young head, he uttered another ferocious, wild cry.In an instant, death-like loneliness enveloped the entire jungle.After a while, there was a deep, mysterious answer from Lin Haizhong.

It was the roar of Numa the Lion.From far, far away, there was another faint and terrifying roar of a giant ape. Taishan first ran to the side of the stream and drank his fill.Then go to his hut.The door of the hut was still closed and bolted as it had been when he and D'Arnot had left.He opened the door and walked in.Nothing inside had been touched.The desk, the bed, the crib with rails that my father had made, the bookshelves and the cupboards were still the same as they had been for 22 years, as they had been since he left the place nearly two years ago. The scene in front of him gave him a kind of comfort, but his stomach started to growl.The hunger was unbearable, so Taishan went to find food immediately.There was nothing to eat in the hut, and he had no game-arms, but a rope hanging on the wall, and it was a rope that was broken and reconnected and reconnected and broken.A few years ago, because he twisted a new rope, this one was hung there and was no longer used.Tarzan wished he had a knife, but never mind, before sundown to-morrow he'd have knives and spears and bow and arrows—the rope would get him all that, and get him food too.So he wound the rope carefully, put it on his shoulders, walked out of the hut, and closed the door.

Not far from the cabin, there is a dense jungle.Tarzan dived in, searching cautiously—he was once more a beast hunting for food.He stayed under the tree for a while, and because he didn't find any prey nearby, he jumped up the tree.He swung from tree to tree, and all the joys of his old life passed through his mind.That kind of stupid annoyance and unnecessary sadness all disappeared in an instant.Now, he is living!Only then did he enjoy the happiness and joy of being a free man!Who wants to go back to the suffocating, wicked city of civilized man when the vast jungle gives him ease and liberation again!No, he doesn't want to go back.

While it was still daylight, Tarzan came to a small river in the jungle.Here you can wade through water, and for many years, the beasts of the jungle have come here to drink water.At night, lions often lurk in dense bushes, waiting for antelope and bucks to drink.At this moment, the black bear Hota came to drink water, and the ape Tarzan came to look for food—because his stomach was already empty. He squatted on a branch that was not too high above the path, and waited for a full hour. At this time, as the dusk deepened, he heard a slight, rustling sound of walking in the dense bushes beside the river bank. And the sound of a huge body scraping against thatch and vines.No one will hear the sound except Taishan.Moreover, Mount Tai could not only hear it, but also recognized that it was the sound of Numa the lion walking.Like him, it came to find food.A smile appeared on the corner of Tarzan's mouth.

After a while, he heard the sound of an animal walking cautiously along the path to a drinking place.In the blink of an eye, it has come to the front—— It's a black bear.This is a delicacy, and Taishan is so greedy that his mouth is watering. It was an ominous omen that the jungle where Numa the lion was hiding was motionless.The black bear walked under the branch on which Tarzan was crouching.Walk a few steps forward, and you will be within the reach of Numa's sharp claws.Tarzan could picture old Numa's eyes glistening; he could picture him taking a deep breath, preparing to let out a terrible growl, snapping his prey down, and then lunging forward, crushing the terrified crisp with terrible scorching teeth. broken bones.

But just when Numa was bowing her body and preparing to do it, a rope snaked down from a not-so-high branch next to her.The noose is just right around the black bear's neck.The black bear screamed in terror, and Numa the lion saw the imminent prey being dragged back to the path.When it rushed over, the black bear had already been lifted into the air.There was a face mocking him wantonly among the branches and leaves of the big tree. Numa roared, and Taishan crouched on the tree and taunted it heartily.It was angry and hungry, and walked back and forth around the big tree.After a while, it stopped, supported its body on its two hind legs and stood upright, and rushed towards the enemy on the tree. Its sharp claws grabbed the tree trunk and tore off pieces of bark, exposing the dense wood. At this time, Tai Shan had already hung the desperately struggling black bear to the thick branch next to him, and stretched out his big hands like iron pincers to pinch its neck that had been tightened by the noose.Tarzan the ape didn't have a knife, but the creator gave him a "tool" to cut food from the quivering belly of the black bear - he bared his shiny teeth and tore the delicious bear meat.The angry lion raised his head and looked at the fat in his mouth being gobbled up by others. After Taishan filled his belly, it was completely dark.The meat is simply delicious!In fact, he had never been used to the kind of cooked meat that civilized people eat. In his savage heart there was always a longing for the hot flesh and red blood of the freshly killed game. He wiped his bloody hands with leaves, carried the leftover bear meat on his shoulder, walked through the "middle passage" in the woods, and climbed towards the hut.At this moment, in the Indian Ocean thousands of miles away, Jenny Porter and William Cecil Clayton had just had a sumptuous dinner on the "Alice" and stood up from the table. Numa the lion walked below.When Tarzan occasionally looked down into the woodland, he saw those evil green eyes following him closely in the darkness.Numa had stopped growling now, and she was slinking among the trees like the shadow of a gigantic lynx.But every step it took could not escape Tarzan's sensitive ears. Taishan wondered in his heart whether the lion wanted to follow him all the way to his hut.Of course he didn't want that, because it would mean curling up on a branch for the night.He would rather sleep comfortably on the bed covered with hay in the cabin.But as a last resort, he also knew which tree to find the most comfortable tree, and lay down on it to sleep peacefully.In the past, I don't know how many times he was followed by a lion or leopard and couldn't go home, so he huddled in that big tree and spent the night until the sun rose, or the guy changed his mind and left in a hurry. However, after a while, Numa didn't want to continue to follow.It let out a series of terrifying howls and groans, and turned angrily to find the easier prey it had found, and went to fill its stomach.Tai Shan returned to his hut safely, and lay down on the pile of rotten grass that was once a comfortable grass bed, but now it was moldy.In this way, Mr. John Tarzan easily stripped off the cloak of civilization added to him by fate, and fell into a sweet dream contentedly like a beast with "full meat and food".However, if Jane Potter had accepted his love, he would have lived another life forever, and I am afraid that even the thought of such a barbaric existence would be disgusting. Taishan drifted in the sea for a day and a night, and he was extremely tired. In addition, he hadn't climbed as fast as yesterday for nearly two years, so he became more and more exhausted, and he slept until the next morning.After waking up, he first ran to the stream to drink water, then jumped into the sea and swam for 15 minutes.Then back to the lodge for breakfast - bear meat. After eating, the rest of the meat is buried in the soft sand outside the hut, ready to be eaten at night. He took the rope again and went into the jungle.This time he wants to capture a "higher" prey - people.Although he thinks that the quality of many animals in the jungle is much higher than that of the people he captured, he has to admit that people belong to the category of "higher" after all.Today, Taishan's task is to engage in weapons.He didn't know whether the women and children of the Woodenga tribe were still in the previous village after the French sailors went on a crusade to avenge Diarnot and slaughtered all the black warriors.He hoped he could find the surviving samurai there.Otherwise, he didn't know how far he would have to go to find other villages. The orangutan Tarzan climbed quickly in the woods, and at about noon, he came to Mubenga's village.But he was very disappointed. The previous plantain field was overgrown with trees, the thatched huts had already collapsed and turned into ruins, and there was no one in the village.He scoured the ruins for half an hour, hoping to find a weapon, but found nothing.So he had to continue searching along the small river flowing from the southeast.He knew that it was generally easier to find tribes of indigenous people near water sources. As he walked, he searched for food according to the method Kara taught him.Dig up rotting logs for tasty insects, climb tree branches to "loot" a bird's nest, or swoop down on a hare like a cat.He also ate other things, but the general principle was that the less trouble the better—Tarzan was an ape again, and the fierce, brave ape that Kara had raised him to be. For the first twenty years of his life, he was like this. Sometimes he would think that at this moment, perhaps a spotless friend was sitting leisurely in a club in Paris like he was a few months ago, and at this moment he would suddenly stop and stand there motionless. .It seemed as if a breeze carried the scent of new prey or vicious foe to his trained nose. That night, he fell asleep peacefully on the branch of a towering old tree far away from the hut.When the evening wind blew, he and the big tree swayed gently at a height of a hundred feet.He had already had a merry supper, this time of venison.This deer also died under the lightning-fast lasso. Early the next morning, Taishan continued to trek along the small river.He walked for three days, and finally came to a place he had never been to before.The trees on the higher hills of this place are relatively sparse, and there are towering mountains in the distance, and a wide plain below the mountains.In that piece of open land, there are countless antelopes running, and large groups of zebras.Taishan was fascinated by the scenery.He was going to make a long visit to this newly discovered "New World". On the morning of the fourth day, a faint smell flowed between his nostrils.He was taken aback, although he was far away, he could already smell the scent of a person.The orangutan Tarzan was very happy, and immediately mobilized the "positivity" of all sensory organs, against the wind, towards the direction of the prey, lightly and quickly climbed away.After a while, I saw a black warrior walking quietly through the woods. Taishan followed his prey closely, thinking of a relatively open place to attack.Just as he was secretly following this black man who was still kept in the dark, a new idea appeared in Taishan's mind.This idea is obviously given to him by civilized society.He thought that civilized people seldom kill innocent people without cause.It can also be said to be a reason for wanting to get this person's weapons and clothing.But just for this reason, do you have the right to kill him? The more he thought about it, the more he felt that it was a very wrong thing to kill this black man like he killed a lion or a black bear.Just like that, before he could make up his mind on what to do, a clearing appeared in front of him, and beyond the clearing was a village surrounded by fences, with huts like beehives in the village. As soon as the black warrior came out of the woods, Taishan suddenly saw a lion sneaking behind him through the tangled grass among the trees.As soon as Tarzan realized that the black man's life was in danger, his previous attitude of treating him as his prey changed immediately.Now the Negro is a fellow man threatened by a common enemy. Numa the lion bowed her body and was about to pounce on the black man. She had no time to weigh the pros and cons and calculate the gains and losses.Then, a series of things happened almost at the same time: the lion rushed towards the black man from the grass, Tarzan shouted a warning, and the black man turned around just in time to see a grass rope like a long snake flying down from the sky, the noose was not too small Leaning on Numa's neck, the pounced lion stopped suddenly in mid-air. Tarzan the Ape was eager to trap the giant beast that swooped towards the black man, so he didn't have time to guard against the huge pulling force and vibration of the rope after it was trapped.Therefore, although Numa was pulled halfway and failed to stretch out her sharp claws to break the flesh of the black man, the huge pulling force made Tarzan lose his balance.He rolled down from the tree and fell only a few paces away from the enraged lion.Numa turned her head like a bolt of lightning, and rushed towards this new opponent.Tarzan was unarmed, and this moment was closer to death than ever before.It was the black man who saved him.The samurai immediately realized that it was this strange white man who had saved his life.He also saw that, barring a miracle, it would be difficult for his "protector" to escape Numa's sharp, murderous yellow teeth. The black man swung the arm holding the spear back sharply, his strong muscles bulging high under the shiny black skin.He threw his spear at Numa the Lion with all his might.The sharp, metal-capped spear was on target, piercing Numa's right groin to his left shoulder.Painful and angry, the giant beast roared horribly, turned around and rushed at the black man again.But after running about ten steps, it was restrained by the rope again, so it had to turn around and attack Mount Tai again.At this time, it felt a sharp pain again, and a hooked poison front shot half of its length into its quivering flesh.Thus, the lion Numa no longer rushed left and right.At this time, Taishan had already run around the big tree twice, and tied the rope tightly to the trunk. Seeing what Tarzan was up to, the black man grinned.But Taishan knew in his heart that he must kill Numa as soon as possible, otherwise once it bites the not very thick rope with its sharp teeth, the consequences will be disastrous.He jumped up to the Negro and drew a long, slender hunting knife from its sheath.Then, gesturing for the black man to continue shooting arrows at the giant beast, he approached it step by step with a knife in his hand. In this way, the negro was teasing the lion on the other side, and Tarzan touched it cautiously from the other side.Numa roared, growled, and moaned in pain like crazy.Supporting the body on two hind legs, they rushed towards Mount Tai for a while, and for the black man for a while, but it was only a waste of effort. Later, the clever ape Tarzan saw the opportunity, jumped up, and rode on Numa's back. One thick arm tightly strangled the lion's tawny neck, and the other big hand raised a black hunting knife and stabbed it straight. heart.Then Tarzan stood up, and the black and the white looked into each other's eyes across the body of the great beast they had slain.The negro made a friendly gesture, and Tarzan also expressed his thanks in a very friendly way.