"Where is Uhha, my daughter?" demanded the witch doctor.
The river devil tried to free his arms, but they were too tightly bound. He made no reply to Khamis' question. It was as though he had not heard it. He ceased struggling and lay back again, resting. After a while he opened his eyes once more and lay looking at Khamis, but he did not speak.
"Get up!" commanded the witch doctor and prodded him with a spear.
The river devil rolled over on his side, flexed his right knee, raised on one elbow and finally got to his feet. Khamis prodded him in the direction of the trail. Toward dusk they arrived at the village of Obebe .
When the warriors and the women and the children saw who it was that Khamis was bringing to the village they became very much excited, and had it not been for the witch doctor, of whom they were afraid, they would have knifed and stoned the prisoner to death before he was fairly inside the village gates; but Khamis did not want the river devil killed—not yet. He wanted first to force from him the truth concerning Uhha. So far he had been unable to get a word out of his prisoner. Incessant questioning, emphasized by many prods of the spear point had elicited nothing.
Khamis threw his prisoner into the same hut from which the River Devil had escaped; but he bound him securely and placed two warriors on guard. He had no mind to lose him again. Obebe came to see him. He, too, questioned him; but the river devil only looked blankly in the face of the chief.
"I will make him speak," said Obebe. "After we have finished eating, we will have him out and make him speak. I know many ways."
"You must not kill him," said the witch doctor. "He knows what became of Uhha, and until be tells me no one shall kill him."
"He will speak before he dies," said Obebe.
"He is a river devil and will never die," said Khamis, reverting to the old controversy.
"He is Tarzan," cried Obebe, and the two were still arguing after they had passed out of hearing of the prisoner lying in the filth of the hut.
After they had eaten he saw them heating irons in a fire near the hut of the witch doctor, who was squatting before the entrance working rapidly with numerous charms—bits of wood wrapped in leaves, pieces of stone, some pebbles, a zebra's tail.
Villagers were congregating about Khamis until presently the prisoner could no longer see him. A little later a black boy came and spoke to his guards, and he was taken out and pushed roughly toward the hut of the witch doctor.
Obebe was there, as he saw after the guards had opened a way through the throng and he stood beside the fire in the center of the circle. It was only a small fire; just enough to keep a couple of irons hot.
"Where is Uhha, my daughter?" demanded Khamis.
The river devil did not answer. Not once had he spoken since Khamis had captured him.
"Burn out one of his eyes," said Obebe. "That will make him speak!"
"Cut out his tongue!" screamed a woman. "Cut out his tongue."
"Then he cannot speak at all, you fool," cried Khamis.
The witch doctor arose and put the question again, but received no reply. Then he struck the river devil a heavy blow in the face. Khamis had lost his temper, so that he did not fear even a river devil.
"You will answer me now!" he screamed, and stooping he seized a red-hot iron.
"The right eye first!" shrilled Obebe.
The doctor came to the bungalow of the ape-man. Lady Greystoke brought him with her. They were three tired and dusty travelers as they dismounted at last before the rose-embowered entrance—the famous London surgeon, Lady Greystoke, and Flora Hawkes, her maid. The surgeon and Lady Greystoke went immediately to the room where Tarzan sat in an improvised wheelchair. He looked up at them blankly as they entered.
"Don't you know me, John?" asked the woman.
Her son took her by the shoulders and led her away, weeping.
"He does not know any of us," he said. "Wait until after the operation, mother, before you see him again. You can do him no good and to see him this way is too hard upon you."
The great surgeon made his examination. There was pressure on the brain from a recent fracture of the skull. An operation would relieve the pressure and might restore the patient's mind and memory. It was worth attempting.
Nurses and two doctors from Nairobi , engaged the day they arrived there, followed Lady Greystoke and the London surgeon, reaching the bungalow the day after their arrival. The operation took place the following morning.
Lady Greystoke, Korak and Meriem were awaiting, in an adjoining room, the verdict of the surgeon. Was the operation a failure or a success? They sat mutely staring at the door leading into the improvised operating room. At last it opened, after what seemed ages, but was only perhaps, an hour. The surgeon entered the room where they sat their eyes, dumbly pleading, asked him the question that their lips dared not voice.
"I cannot tell you anything as yet," he said, "other than that the operation, as an operation, was successful. What the result of it will be only time will tell. I have given orders that no one is to enter his room, other than the nurses for ten days. They are instructed not to speak to him or allow him to speak for the same length of time; but he will not wish to speak, for I shall keep him in a semiconscious condition, by means of drugs, until the ten days have elapsed. Until then, Lady Greystoke, we may only hope for the best; but I can assure you that your husband has every chance for complete recovery. I think you may safely hope for the best."
The witch doctor laid his left hand upon the shoulder of the river devil; in his right hand was clutched a red-hot iron.
"The right eye first," shrilled Obebe again.
Suddenly the muscles upon the back and shoulders of the prisoner leaped into action, rolling beneath his brown hide. For just an instant he appeared to exert terrific physical force, there was a snapping sound at his back as the strands about his wrists parted, and an instant later steel-thewed fingers fell upon the right wrist of the witch doctor. Blazing eyes burned into his. He dropped the red-hot rod, his fingers paralyzed by the pressure upon his wrist, and he screamed, for he saw death in the angry face of the god.
Obebe leaped to his feet. Warriors pressed forward, but not near enough to be within reach of the river devil . They had never been certain of the safety of tempting Providence in any such manner as Khamis and Obebe had been about to do. Now here was the result! The wrath of the river devil
would fall upon them all. They fell back, some of them, and that was a cue for others to fall back. In the minds of all was the thought[-]-if I have no hand in this the river devil will not be angry with me. Then they turned and fled to their huts, stumbling over their women and their children who were trying to outdistance their lords and masters.
Obebe turned now to flee also, and the river devil picked Khamis up, and held him in two hands high above his head, and ran after Obebe the chief. The latter dodged into his own hut. He had scarce reached the center of it when there came a terrific crash upon the light, thatched roof, which gave way beneath a heavy weight A body descending upon the chief filled him with terror. The river devil had leaped in through the roof of his hut to destroy him! The instinct of self-preservation rose momentarily above his fear of the supernatural, for now he was convinced that Khamis had been right and the creature they had so long held prisoner was indeed the river devil . And Obebe drew the knife at his side and plunged it again and again into the body of the creature that had leaped upon him, and, when he knew that life was extinct, he rose and dragging the body after him stepped out of his hut into the light of the moon and the fires.