Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar Edgar Rice Burroughs

Lieutenant Albert Werper had only the prestige of the name he had dishonored to thank for hisnarrow escape from being cashiered. At first he had been humbly thankful, too, that they had senthim 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 achange. 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 himhere-for the very men he had at first inwardly thanked for saving him from the ignominy ofdegradation. He regretted the gay life of Brussels as he never had regretted the sins which had snatched himfrom that gayest of capitals, and as the days passed he came to center his resentment upon therepresentative in Congo land of the authority which had exiled him-his captain and immediatesuperior. This officer was a cold, taciturn man, inspiring little love in those directly beneath him, yetrespected 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 verandaof their common quarters, smoking their evening cigarets in a silence which neither seemed desirousof breaking. The senseless hatred of the lieutenant grew at last into a form of mania. The captain'snatural 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 oneevening his madness became suddenly homicidal. He fingered the butt of the revolver at his hip, hiseyes 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 agentleman, 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 seenmen before with the jungle madness upon them-the madness of solitude and unrestrainedbrooding, and perhaps a touch of fever. He rose and extended his hand to lay it upon the other's shoulder. Quiet words of counsel wereupon his lips; but they were never spoken. Werper construed his superior's action into an attempt toclose with him. His revolver was on a level with the captain's heart, and the latter had taken but astep when Werper pulled the trigger. Without a moan the man sank to the rough planking of theveranda, and as he fell the mists that had clouded Werper's brain lifted, so that he saw himself andthe deed that he had done in the same light that those who must judge him would see them