The first consideration of the party was to locate freshwater and make camp, for all knew that their term ofexistence upon Jungle Island might be drawn out to months,or even years.

Tarzan knew the nearest water, and to this he immediatelyled the party. Here the men fell to work to construct sheltersand rude furniture while Tarzan went into the jungle aftermeat, leaving the faithful Mugambi and the Mosula womanto guard Jane, whose safety he would never trust to anymember of the Kincaid's cut-throat crew.

Lady Greystoke suffered far greater anguish than any otherof the castaways, for the blow to her hopes and her alreadycruelly lacerated mother-heart lay not in her own privationsbut in the knowledge that she might now never be able tolearn the fate of her first-born or do aught to discover hiswhereabouts, or ameliorate his condition--a condition whichimagination naturally pictured in the most frightful forms.

For two weeks the party divided the time amongst thevarious duties which had been allotted to each. A daylightwatch was maintained from sunrise to sunset upon a bluffnear the camp--a jutting shoulder of rock which overlookedthe sea. Here, ready for instant lighting, was gathered a hugepile of dry branches, while from a lofty pole which they hadset in the ground there floated an improvised distress signalfashioned from a red undershirt which belonged to the mateof the Kincaid.

But never a speck upon the horizon that might be sail orsmoke rewarded the tired eyes that in their endless, hopelessvigil strained daily out across the vast expanse of ocean.

It was Tarzan who suggested, finally, that they attempt toconstruct a vessel that would bear them back to the mainland. He alone could show them how to fashion rude tools, andwhen the idea had taken root in the minds of the men theywere eager to commence their labours.

But as time went on and the Herculean nature of their taskbecame more and more apparent they fell to grumbling, andto quarrelling among themselves, so that to the other dangerswere now added dissension and suspicion.

More than before did Tarzan now fear to leave Jane amongthe half brutes of the Kincaid's crew; but hunting he mustdo, for none other could so surely go forth and return withmeat as he. Sometimes Mugambi spelled him at the hunting;but the black's spear and arrows were never so sure of resultsas the rope and knife of the ape-man.

Finally the men shirked their work, going off into thejungle by twos to explore and to hunt. All this time the camphad had no sight of Sheeta, or Akut and the other great apes,though Tarzan had sometimes met them in the jungle as he hunted.

And as matters tended from bad to worse in the camp ofthe castaways upon the east coast of Jungle Island, anothercamp came into being upon the north coast.

Here, in a little cove, lay a small schooner, the Cowrie,whose decks had but a few days since run red with the bloodof her officers and the loyal members of her crew, for theCowrie had fallen upon bad days when it had shipped suchmen as Gust and Momulla the Maori and that arch-fiendKai Shang of Fachan.

There were others, too, ten of them all told, the scum ofthe South Sea ports; but Gust and Momulla and Kai Shangwere the brains and cunning of the company. It was they whohad instigated the mutiny that they might seize and dividethe catch of pearls which constituted the wealth of theCowrie's cargo.

It was Kai Shang who had murdered the captain as he layasleep in his berth, and it had been Momulla the Maori whohad led the attack upon the officer of the watch.

Gust, after his own peculiar habit, had found means todelegate to the others the actual taking of life. Not thatGust entertained any scruples on the subject, other than thosewhich induced in him a rare regard for his own personal safety. There is always a certain element of risk to the assassin,for victims of deadly assault are seldom prone to die quietlyand considerately. There is always a certain element of riskto go so far as to dispute the issue with the murderer.It was this chance of dispute which Gust preferred to forgo.

But now that the work was done the Swede aspired to theposition of highest command among the mutineers. He hadeven gone so far as to appropriate and wear certain articlesbelonging to the murdered captain of the Cowrie--articles ofapparel which bore upon them the badges and insignia of authority.

Kai Shang was peeved. He had no love for authority, andcertainly not the slightest intention of submitting to thedomination of an ordinary Swede sailor.

The seeds of discontent were, therefore, already planted in the campof the mutineers of the Cowrie at the north edge of Jungle Island.But Kai Shang realized that he must act with circumspection,for Gust alone of the motley horde possessed sufficientknowledge of navigation to get them out of the South Atlanticand around the cape into more congenial waters where they mightfind a market for their ill-gotten wealth, and no questions asked.

The day before they sighted Jungle Island and discoveredthe little land-locked harbour upon the bosom of which theCowrie now rode quietly at anchor, the watch had discoveredthe smoke and funnels of a warship upon the southern horizon.

The chance of being spoken and investigated by a man-of-warappealed not at all to any of them, so they put into hidingfor a few days until the danger should have passed.

And now Gust did not wish to venture out to sea again. There was no telling, he insisted, but that the ship they hadseen was actually searching for them. Kai Shang pointed outthat such could not be the case since it was impossible forany human being other than themselves to have knowledgeof what had transpired aboard the Cowrie.

But Gust was not to be persuaded. In his wicked heart henursed a scheme whereby he might increase his share of thebooty by something like one hundred per cent. He alonecould sail the Cowrie, therefore the others could not leaveJungle Island without him; but what was there to preventGust, with just sufficient men to man the schooner, slippingaway from Kai Shang, Momulla the Maori, and some halfof the crew when opportunity presented?

It was for this opportunity that Gust waited. Some daythere would come a moment when Kai Shang, Momulla, andthree or four of the others would be absent from camp,exploring or hunting. The Swede racked his brain for some planwhereby he might successfully lure from the sight of theanchored ship those whom he had determined to abandon.

To this end he organized hunting party after hunting party,but always the devil of perversity seemed to enter the soul ofKai Shang, so that wily celestial would never hunt exceptin the company of Gust himself.

One day Kai Shang spoke secretly with Momulla the Maori,pouring into the brown ear of his companion the suspicionswhich he harboured concerning the Swede. Momulla was forgoing immediately and running a long knife throughthe heart of the traitor.

It is true that Kai Shang had no other evidence than thenatural cunning of his own knavish soul--but he imaginedin the intentions of Gust what he himself would have beenglad to accomplish had the means lain at hand.

But he dared not let Momulla slay the Swede, upon whomthey depended to guide them to their destination. They decided, however, that it would do no harm to attempt tofrighten Gust into acceding to their demands, and with thispurpose in mind the Maori sought out the self-constitutedcommander of the party.

When he broached the subject of immediate departureGust again raised his former objection--that the warshipmight very probably be patrolling the sea directly in theirsouthern path, waiting for them to make the attempt to reachother waters.

Momulla scoffed at the fears of his fellow, pointing outthat as no one aboard any warship knew of their mutiny therecould be no reason why they should be suspected.

"Ah!" exclaimed Gust, "there is where you are wrong. There is where you are lucky that you have an educated manlike me to tell you what to do. You are an ignorant savage,Momulla, and so you know nothing of wireless."

The Maori leaped to his feet and laid his hand upon thehilt of his knife.

"I am no savage," he shouted.

"I was only joking," the Swede hastened to explain. "We areold friends, Momulla; we cannot afford to quarrel, at leastnot while old Kai Shang is plotting to steal all the pearlsfrom us. If he could find a man to navigate the Cowrie hewould leave us in a minute. All his talk about getting awayfrom here is just because he has some scheme in his head toget rid of us."

"But the wireless," asked Momulla. "What has the wirelessto do with our remaining here?"

"Oh yes," replied Gust, scratching his head. He was wonderingif the Maori were really so ignorant as to believe thepreposterous lie he was about to unload upon him. "Oh yes! You see every warship is equipped with what they call awireless apparatus. It lets them talk to other ships hundredsof miles away, and it lets them listen to all that is said onthese other ships. Now, you see, when you fellows wereshooting up the Cowrie you did a whole lot of loud talking, andthere isn't any doubt but that that warship was a-lyin' off southof us listenin' to it all. Of course they might not have learnedthe name of the ship, but they heard enough to know that thecrew of some ship was mutinying and killin' her officers. So yousee they'll be waiting to search every ship they sight for along time to come, and they may not be far away now."

When he had ceased speaking the Swede strove to assumean air of composure that his listener might not have hissuspicions aroused as to the truth of the statements thathad just been made.

Momulla sat for some time in silence, eyeing Gust. At lasthe rose.

"You are a great liar," he said. "If you don't get us onour way by tomorrow you'll never have another chance to lie,for I heard two of the men saying that they'd like to runa knife into you and that if you kept them in this hole anylonger they'd do it."

"Go and ask Kai Shang if there is not a wireless," replied Gust. "He will tell you that there is such a thing and that vesselscan talk to one another across hundreds of miles of water. Then say to the two men who wish to kill me that if theydo so they will never live to spend their share of theswag, for only I can get you safely to any port."

So Momulla went to Kai Shang and asked him if there wassuch an apparatus as a wireless by means of which shipscould talk with each other at great distances, and Kai Shangtold him that there was.

Momulla was puzzled; but still he wished to leave theisland, and was willing to take his chances on the open searather than to remain longer in the monotony of the camp.

"If we only had someone else who could navigate a ship!"wailed Kai Shang.

That afternoon Momulla went hunting with two other Maoris. They hunted toward the south, and had not gone farfrom camp when they were surprised by the sound of voicesahead of them in the jungle.

They knew that none of their own men had preceded them,and as all were convinced that the island was uninhabited,they were inclined to flee in terror on the hypothesis that theplace was haunted--possibly by the ghosts of the murderedofficers and men of the Cowrie.

But Momulla was even more curious than he was superstitious,and so he quelled his natural desire to flee from the supernatural. Motioning his companions to follow his example, he droppedto his hands and knees, crawling forward stealthily andwith quakings of heart through the jungle in the directionfrom which came the voices of the unseen speakers.

Presently, at the edge of a little clearing, he halted, andthere he breathed a deep sigh of relief, for plainly before himhe saw two flesh-and-blood men sitting upon a fallen log andtalking earnestly together.

One was Schneider, mate of the Kincaid, and the otherwas a seaman named Schmidt.

"I think we can do it, Schmidt," Schneider was saying. "A good canoe wouldn't be hard to build, and three of uscould paddle it to the mainland in a day if the wind was rightand the sea reasonably calm. There ain't no use waiting forthe men to build a big enough boat to take the whole party,for they're sore now and sick of working like slaves all day long. It ain't none of our business anyway to save the Englishman. Let him look out for himself, says I." He paused for a moment,and then eyeing the other to note the effect of his next words,he continued, "But we might take the woman. It would be a shameto leave a nice-lookin' piece like she is in such aGott-forsaken hole as this here island."

Schmidt looked up and grinned.

"So that's how she's blowin', is it?" he asked. "Why didn'tyou say so in the first place? Wot's in it for me if I help you?"

"She ought to pay us well to get her back to civilization,"explained Schneider, "an' I tell you what I'll do. I'll justwhack up with the two men that helps me. I'll take half an'they can divide the other half--you an' whoever the otherbloke is. I'm sick of this place, an' the sooner I getout of it the better I'll like it. What do you say?"

"Suits me," replied Schmidt. "I wouldn't know how toreach the mainland myself, an' know that none o' the otherfellows would, so's you're the only one that knows anythingof navigation you're the fellow I'll tie to."

Momulla the Maori pricked up his ears. He had a smatteringof every tongue that is spoken upon the seas, and morethan a few times had he sailed on English ships, so that heunderstood fairly well all that had passed between Schneiderand Schmidt since he had stumbled upon them.

He rose to his feet and stepped into the clearing. Schneider andhis companion started as nervously as though a ghost had risenbefore them. Schneider reached for his revolver. Momulla raisedhis right hand, palm forward, as a sign of his pacific intentions.

"I am a friend," he said. "I heard you; but do not fearthat I will reveal what you have said. I can help you, and youcan help me." He was addressing Schneider. "You can navigatea ship, but you have no ship. We have a ship, but no one tonavigate it. If you will come with us and ask no questionswe will let you take the ship where you will after youhave landed us at a certain port, the name of which we willgive you later. You can take the woman of whom you speak,and we will ask no questions either. Is it a bargain?"

Schneider desired more information, and got as much asMomulla thought best to give him. Then the Maori suggestedthat they speak with Kai Shang. The two members of theKincaid's company followed Momulla and his fellows to apoint in the jungle close by the camp of the mutineers. Here Momulla hid them while he went in search of Kai Shang,first admonishing his Maori companions to stand guard overthe two sailors lest they change their minds and attemptto escape. Schneider and Schmidt were virtually prisoners,though they did not know it.

Presently Momulla returned with Kai Shang, to whom hehad briefly narrated the details of the stroke of good fortunethat had come to them. The Chinaman spoke at length withSchneider, until, notwithstanding his natural suspicion ofthe sincerity of all men, he became quite convinced thatSchneider was quite as much a rogue as himself and that thefellow was anxious to leave the island.

These two premises accepted there could be little doubtthat Schneider would prove trustworthy in so far as acceptingthe command of the Cowrie was concerned; after that KaiShang knew that he could find means to coerce the man intosubmission to his further wishes.

When Schneider and Schmidt left them and set out in thedirection of their own camp, it was with feelings of fargreater relief than they had experienced in many a day. Now at last they saw a feasible plan for leaving the islandupon a seaworthy craft. There would be no more hard labourat ship-building, and no risking their lives upon a crudelybuilt makeshift that would be quite as likely to go to thebottom as it would to reach the mainland.

Also, they were to have assistance in capturing the woman,or rather women, for when Momulla had learned that therewas a black woman in the other camp he had insisted thatshe be brought along as well as the white woman.

As Kai Shang and Momulla entered their camp, it waswith a realization that they no longer needed Gust. They marched straight to the tent in which they might expect tofind him at that hour of the day, for though it would havebeen more comfortable for the entire party to remain aboardthe ship, they had mutually decided that it would be safer forall concerned were they to pitch their camp ashore.

Each knew that in the heart of the others was sufficienttreachery to make it unsafe for any member of the party togo ashore leaving the others in possession of the Cowrie, sonot more than two or three men at a time were ever permittedaboard the vessel unless all the balance of the companywas there too.

As the two crossed toward Gust's tent the Maori felt theedge of his long knife with one grimy, calloused thumb. The Swede would have felt far from comfortable could he haveseen this significant action, or read what was passing amidthe convolutions of the brown man's cruel brain.

Now it happened that Gust was at that moment in the tentoccupied by the cook, and this tent stood but a few feetfrom his own. So that he heard the approach of Kai Shangand Momulla, though he did not, of course, dream that ithad any special significance for him.

Chance had it, though, that he glanced out of the doorwayof the cook's tent at the very moment that Kai Shang andMomulla approached the entrance to his, and he thought thathe noted a stealthiness in their movements that comportedpoorly with amicable or friendly intentions, and then, just asthey two slunk within the interior, Gust caught a glimpse ofthe long knife which Momulla the Maori was then carryingbehind his back.

The Swede's eyes opened wide, and a funny little sensationassailed the roots of his hairs. Also he turned almost whitebeneath his tan. Quite precipitately he left the cook's tent. He was not one who required a detailed exposition of intentionsthat were quite all too obvious.

As surely as though he had heard them plotting, he knewthat Kai Shang and Momulla had come to take his life. The knowledge that he alone could navigate the Cowrie had,up to now, been sufficient assurance of his safety; but quiteevidently something had occurred of which he had no knowledgethat would make it quite worth the while of his co-conspiratorsto eliminate him.

Without a pause Gust darted across the beach and into the jungle. He was afraid of the jungle; uncanny noises that wereindeed frightful came forth from its recesses--the tangledmazes of the mysterious country back of the beach.

But if Gust was afraid of the jungle he was far more afraidof Kai Shang and Momulla. The dangers of the jungle weremore or less problematical, while the danger that menacedhim at the hands of his companions was a perfectly well-known quantity, which might be expressed in terms of a fewinches of cold steel, or the coil of a light rope. He had seenKai Shang garrotte a man at Pai-sha in a dark alleyway backof Loo Kotai's place. He feared the rope, therefore, morethan he did the knife of the Maori; but he feared them bothtoo much to remain within reach of either. Therefore he chosethe pitiless jungle.