By dawn, the soldiers are dead, Olsen is wounded, and their canoes are stove in. Kutu whispers the name the local Bantu fear to say: “Mangani. The ghost-ape. He protects the orchid vale.”
Together she and Tarzan leap. The river swallows them, the fire above sealing the valley forever.
III. Captive & Captor Jane, separated from the others, stumbles into a natural amphitheater carpeted with the glowing orchids. She photographs one, and the flash-pan detonates like lightning. Suddenly he is there—tall, barefoot, wearing only a sun-faded loincloth of parachute silk. A leather-bound book dangles from a vine belt: her father’s field journal.
Jane’s heart pounds. “You knew my father?”
Tarzan fights like storm-water, but rifles bring him down. As they bind him, Kutu quietly switches sides: he cuts Jane free, then falls to a bullet. Jane, weeping, drags Tarwan into the river gorge; the glowing orchids ignite in the blaze, drifting like embers.
II. The White Ape On the second night, the forest itself seems to exhale. A storm of arrows—poison-tipped—splits the dusk. The askari fire back, but something moves too fast, too fluid. Jane catches only a glimpse: a man-shape, sun-bleached hair whipping like a lion’s mane, eyes reflecting firelight the way a leopard’s do.
–––––––––––––––––––– Title: “The Shame of the Jungle” ––––––––––––––––––––
IV. The Shame Tarzan does not kill her. Instead, he carries her to a cliffside eyrie, a dizzying nest woven between fig trees and vines. Here he keeps relics of the father: compass, fountain pen, photograph of Jane aged twelve. He points to the photo, then at her, accusing. “You left me.”