Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-05-13
CHAPTER I
PnnLpitch and nl1 I've

HtHE Marjorie WIS longboat was float
4 ing down the broad Ugambi with ebh
tide and current. Her crew were lazill
enjoying this respite from the arduou
labor of rowing upstream. Three mile!
below them lay the Marjorie w. herself
quite ready to sail so soon as they SHOULD
have clambered aboard and swung the
longboat to its davits.
Presently the attention of every mar
was drawn from his dreaming or his
gossiping to the northern bank of the
river. There, screaming at them in q
cracked falsetto, and with skinny arms
outstretched, stood a strange apparitior
OF a man.
'wot t'ell?" calculated ono of the
crew.
"A white manl"' muttered the mate
and then: Man the oars, boys and
well just pull over an see what he
wants"
When they came close to the shore
they saw an emaciated creature with
scant white locks, tangled and matted
The thin, bent body was naked save
down the sunken, pookmarked cheeks.
The man Jabbered at them in strange
tongue.
"Rooshun." hazarded the mate. "Savvy
English?" he called to the man.
The scarecrow did, and in that tongue,
brokenly and haltingly. as though it
had been many years since he had used
1t, 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 ex.
tending over period of ten years.
How he happened to have come to
Africa he did not tell them. leaving
them to assume that he had forgotten
the incidents of his life prior to the
frightful ordeals that had wrecked him
mentally and physically. He did not
even tell them his true name; and so
they knew him only as Michael Sabrov,
nor would his own mother have recog.
nized In the sorry wreck the once virile,
though unprincipled, Alexis Paulvitch.
1t had been ten years since the Rus
sian had escaped the fate of his friend,
the archfiend Rokoff; and not once,
but many times, during those ten years
had Paulvitch cursed the fate that had
given to Nicholas Rokoff death and
immunity from suffering, while 1t had
meted to him the hideous terrors of
death that persistently refused to claim
him.
Paulvitch had taken to the jungle
when he had seen the beasts of Tarzan
and their savage lord swarm the deck
Of the Kincaid; and in his terror lest
Tarzan pursue and capture him, he had
stumbled on deep into the jungle, only
to fall at last into the hands of one of
the savage cannibal tribes that had felt
the weight of Rokoff's evil temper and
cruel brutality.
Some strange whim of the chief OF
this tribe saved Paulvitch from death,
only to plunge him into life OF misery
and torture. For ten years he had
been the butt of the village, beaten and
stoned by the women and children, cut
and slashed and disfigured by the war
riors; victim of oftenrecurring fevers
OF the most malignant variety.
Yet he did not die. Smallpox laid
its hideous clutches upon him, leaving
him unspeakably branded with its re-
pulsive marks. Between It and the
attentions Of the tribe. the countenance
OF Alexis Paulvitch was altered beyond
belief.
A few scraggly, yellow-white locks
had supplanted the thick, dark hair that
Aad covered his head. His limbs were
bent and twisted he walked with a
shuniing. unstea1y gait. his body doubled
forward His teeth were gone-knock.
ed out by his savage masters. Even
his mentality was but a sorry mockery
OF what 1t once had been.
They took him aboard the Marjorie
W.. and there they fed and nursed him
He gained little IN strength, but his
appearance never altered for the better
- human derelict, battered and
wrecked. they had found him; a human
battered and wrecked, he would
remain until death claimed him.
Though stfn IN his thirties. Alexis
Paulvitch could easily have passed for
eighty Inscrutable nature had de-
manded OF the aceomplice a greater
penalty than his principal had paid.
IN the mind Of Alexis Paulviteh
there fingered no thoughts OF revenge
--only a duh hatred OF the man whom
he ana Rokoff had tried and failed to
aees There was hatred. too. OF the
memory Of Rokof; ror Rokon had led
aim into the horrors he had uI. dsrgone.
There was hatred Of the police OF a
seore Of cities from which he had had
p fee. There was hafraa Of law.
latre1 " order hatrf7 u erythiag.
ExsFs moment % fhe niaa's waking