Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Son of Tarzan Edgar Rice Burroughs

The long boat of the Marjorie W. was floating down the broad Ugambi with ebb tide andcurrent. Her crew were lazily enjoying this respite from the arduous labor of rowing upstream. Three miles below them lay the Marjorie W. herself, quite ready to sail so soon asthey should have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently theattention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping to the northern bankof the river. There, screaming at them in a cracked falsetto and with skinny armsoutstretched, stood a strange apparition of a man."Wot the 'ell?" ejaculated one of the crew."A white man!" muttered the mate, and then: "Man the oars, boys, and we'll just pullover an' see what he wants."When they came close to the shore they saw an emaciated creature with scant whitelocks tangled and matted. The thin, bent body was naked but for a loin cloth. Tears wererolling down the sunken pock-marked cheeks. The man jabbered at them in a strangetongue."Rooshun," hazarded the mate. "Savvy English?" he called to the man. He did, and in that tongue, brokenly and haltingly, as though it had been many yearssince he had used it, he begged them to take him with them away from this awful country. Once on board the Marjorie W. the stranger told his rescuers a pitiful tale of privation, hardships, and torture, extending over a period of ten years. How he happened to havecome to Africa he did not tell them, leaving them to assume he had forgotten the incidentsof his life prior to the frightful ordeals that had wrecked him mentally and physically. Hedid not even tell them his true name, and so they knew him only as Michael Sabrov, nor wasthere any resemblance between this sorry wreck and the virile, though unprincipled, AlexisPaulvitch of old