TARZAN ALIVE

Philip José Farmer

A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke

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I am as free as Nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

– JOHN DRYDEN

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men.

– JOSEPH CAMPBELL

There is always something new out of Africa.

– PLINY THE ELDER

The worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs are never-never lands, dream worlds where virtue and courage win honour and beauty, where evil can be identified and confronted, and despite all odds defeated. … This sense of timelessness raises Tarzan above the clutches of time.

– RICHARD LUPOFF

FOREWORD

This is a biography of a living person.

It should, therefore, be placed by librarians and booksellers on the ‘B’ shelves. It should be subtitled in the catalog cards as The Life of Lord Greystoke, from 1888 through 1946.

Some might object that, since the book is also a quest for the identity of the real Tarzan, it could be put into the category of ‘mystery.’ Others might object that, since it is based on a semifictional series written by a novelist, it should be classified as ‘fiction.’ However, this book makes a serious attempt to fill in the gaps left by Burroughs and to explain the seeming discrepancies in his works on ‘Lord Greystoke.’ It tries to cull the fictional, the impossible, and the improbable from the works by Burroughs. The residue, I trust, presents a fairly accurate picture of the life and times of the very real Englishman who spent his youth among a group of rare hominids who are probably now extinct. Hominids are subhumans, not great apes, and it was a band of language-using pithecanthropoids who adopted the human infant called Tarzan. Burroughs, who based his early novels of Tarzan on incomplete and sometimes inaccurate data, described the ‘mangani’ as great apes and was there-after stuck with that term. Not that he minded. He was writing novels, and the facts did not always have to be adhered to. Indeed, as I will be demonstrating more than once, he sometimes went out of his way to make sure that the reader thought that his Tarzan books were entirely fictional.

I propose to show that Tarzan is not at all the persona we’ve seen in so many bad movies about him. I propose to show that he is not quite the persona that Burroughs wrote about, though his character, or temperament, is essentially the same. Burroughs did, however, exaggerate some things for romantic purposes. Thus, the physical prowess of Tarzan, while undoubtedly superior to that of any other living being, and his ability to travel through the trees are not up to the feats described by Burroughs. Not quite. And it is doubtful that the real Tarzan ever found more than two lost cities or that they or the inhabitants were exactly as described by Burroughs.

This is not a debunking book, however. I propose to show that Tarzan is, in many ways, the last expression of the mythical Golden Age, that his life emulated, unconsciously, of course, the lives of many of the heroes and demigods of classical and primitive mythologies and legends.

Burroughs, it must be said, did for Tarzan what A. Conan Doyle did for his character, Brigadier Étienne Gerard. Doyle did not exaggerate or falsify too much in his tales of Gerard, as has been proved. There was a real marshal of France named Étienne Gerard, one of Napoleon’s commanders at Waterloo (see The Encyclopaedia Britannica). But Doyle did not base the fictional Gerard on the marshal. He used only his name.

The real Gerard was the Baron de Marbot, Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcelin, 1782-1854 (see The Encyclopaedia Britannica). His fascinating wilder-than-fiction adventures may be read in his Memoirs of His Life and Campaigns, published in 1891 in French and in 1902 in English. More available to American readers is the 1935 abridged edition edited by J. W. Thomason, Jr., Adventures of General Marbot.

Those who have read Doyle’s Gerard stories and the Marbot autobiography know that Doyle did not exaggerate Marbot’s character in the least. Nor did Doyle cross the boundaries between fact and fiction very often. Those adventures of Gerard not found in Marbot could have happened to Marbot easily enough, and he would have acted exactly as Gerard did, though more intelligently. Marbot was not only brighter, he earned a baron’s title, and married and had children, whereas Gerard never got married and was, supposedly, childless, and ended on a small pension in his old age.

Burroughs’ ‘Lord Greystoke’ and the real Englishman are as close in character as Doyle’s Gerard and the real Frenchman. But the fictional Tarzan had adventures that veered more from reality than Gerard’s did. I propose to show what probably did happen to Tarzan. The adventures as described by Burroughs are given in a very shortened form and in my own words. They are rearranged to fit the proper chronological sequence. The background for the stories, neglected by Burroughs, who was primarily a storyteller, will be filled in to the best of my ability. And the reader will finish the book believing, I hope, that there is indeed a flesh-and-blood man behind the fictional mask of the apeman.

I warn the reader that I do not intend to reveal his true identity. I will come as close as I can. If the reader cares to spend as much time as I did, four years, in tracing lineages through the several thousand pages of closely set print of Burke’s Peerage and correlating his finds with historical phenomena and the Tarzan books by Burroughs and various works by Doyle and many other writers of fiction or fact, then he, too, may track down the real Tarzan. And then he will find that the real Tarzan is reported as being dead. I say reported because the man himself has faked his death and taken a new name. The tracker-down will not be as lucky as myself, who got permission from the genuine ‘Lord Greystoke’ to write this biography.

‘Lord Greystoke’ and Gerard are not the only fictional characters based on, or are very close to being, real-life persons. Recent evidence indicates that there was a ‘Scarlet Pimpernel,’ though he did not call himself that and his adventures and ability to disguise himself were not quite as flamboyant as those of Orczy’s character. Nor did he become a baronet until after his exploits. He was, however, as I show in Addendum 2, the ancestor of our ‘Lord Greystoke,’ the real Tarzan.

Lord John Roxton, the great hunter and Southamericanomaniac of Doyle’s The Lost World, had a real-life counterpart very much like him. He was also a nobleman’s son, though his father was not a duke. Doyle’s Professor Challenger was, we know, a Rutherford, though he was not the Professor Rutherford who taught Doyle at Edinburgh University. He was a relative of that Rutherford, and he did go on an expedition to South America. I’m sorry to report that he found no Maple White Land and did not bring back a live pterodactyl, or even a dead one, to London.

Bulldog Drummond, as McNeile admitted, was based on a real man. McNeile’s novels are very much romanticized as far as events go, but the character of Captain Hugh Drummond, D.S.O., M.C., is essentially true.

There was also a real-life Sherlock Holmes, three, in fact, and a Doc Savage, a Lord Peter Wimsey, and a Raffles. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to have been anyone whom Sax Rohmer based his Denis Nayland Smith (unless it was the fictional Holmes) or that greatest of villains, Fu Manchu* These are fictional, as is Holmes’ sister, whom I postulate in Addendum 2† Addendum 2 is half-fiction, half-true, and the family relationships depicted therein are sometimes, as I admit, made up to fill a requisite slot. But Addendum 2 is mostly literary fun. I hope the reader enjoys it as much as I did.

Addendum I is from The Baker Street Journal and is Professor Starr having fun. It is also, he has told me, a satire on a certain type of Ph.D., and the kind of ‘research’ done by this type. But, entirely by accident, Professor Starr struck near the truth. The character of Sidney Trefusis in G. B. Shaw’s novel, An Unsocial Socialist, is based on a real man, a peer of England. He was as eccentric and as radically minded as Trefusis and as the fifth duke of Holdernesse postulated in Starr’s essay. I have located him in Burke’s Peerage and elsewhere; he was indeed the grandfather of Burroughs’ ‘Lord Greystoke.’

He may have been a cabdriver. He held many jobs under many names, as the real-life nobleman whom Shaw calls Trefusis did. One of his names was John Clayton, and he may actually have been questioned by the real-life Holmes. I suspect that he was and that Doyle knew this. Whether or not it was during the case which Doyle calls The Hound of the Baskervilles, I do not know. There is no way of proving this. But he was a cabdriver, and Doyle did know of him, and he did live in Marylebone Borough. And the address given is close to his real address.

Whether or not the real Tarzan inherited the title from the eccentric Socialist ‘Lord Greystoke,’ or is just a baronet, a sort of hereditary knight, I cannot reveal.

The present ‘Lord Greystoke’ is quite adamant about the limits to be observed in this book. Thus, his lineage and, indeed, half of the events and persons herein are not presented with the real names and places and dates attached. Half are. The other half are analogs or parallels. What I give herein is the truth but the truth looked at obliquely or in a distorting mirror.

That is why the librarians and booksellers should place this work in the ‘B’ section. That is why the reader should realize that he is reading something unique, the first analogical, or parallel, biography.

Each chapter number is accompanied by Roman and Arabic numerals in parentheses. These are for the convenience of the scholar. Those who do not care about such things may ignore the parenthetical numbers. For those who do care, (I-1), for instance indicates the first chapter in the first of the twenty-four authorized volumes of the biography by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The biography at hand, Tarzan Alive, reports the events of Tarzan’s life in strict chronological sequence. Mr. Burroughs did not always so report. Thus, he did not go into detail about the ape-mans’ youth until the sixth book of the biography, Jungle Tales of Tarzan. Chapter 6 (Part I-11; VI) indicates that the sixth chapter of this book concerns part of chapter 11 of Book I, Tarzan of the Apes, and all of Book VI, Jungle Tales of Tarzan. It was necessary to insert the events of Book VI in Book I for reasons which will be explained.

The following table gives the Tarzan volumes, by Roman numeral, in the order in which they were published.

TARZAN VOLUMES

I:  TARZAN OF THE APES

II:  THE RETURN OF TARZAN

III:  THE BEASTS OF TARZAN

IV:  THE SON OF TARZAN

V:  TARZAN AND THE JEWEL OF OPAR

VI:  JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN

VII:  TARZAN THE UNTAMED

VIII:  TARZAN THE TERRIBLE

IX:  TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION

X:  TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN

XI:  TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE

XII:  TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE

XIII:  TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE

XIV:  TARZAN THE INVINCIBLE

XV:  TARZAN TRIUMPHANT

XVI:  TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD

XVII:  TARZAN AND THE LION MAN

XVIII:  TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN

XIX:  TARZAN’S QUEST

XX:  TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY

XXI:  TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT

XXII:  TARZAN AND THE FOREIGN LEGION

XXIII:  TARZAN AND THE MADMAN

XXIV:  TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS

1888: THE WORLD

The population of the world was 1,483,000,000, as compared with more than double that in 1970.

The partition of Africa by the European powers was not yet complete. Africa was, in every sense, the Dark Continent.

Grover Cleveland was President of the U.S.

Victoria was queen of England; Lord Salisbury, her Conservative prime minister.

The automobile was still in its experimental stage. Karl Benz had operated his first automobile only three years before.

It would be fifteen years before the Wright brothers would make the first successful flights in a heavier-than-air craft.

Heinrich Hertz generated radio waves with a spark gap transmitter and detected them with apparatus a few feet away.

Jack the Ripper was prowling London’s East End.

Bismarck made his great Reichstag speech, mostly about the Russians, ending with, ‘We Germans fear God and nothing else in the world.’

Count Samuel Teleki, a Hungarian scientist, discovered Lakes Rudolf and Stefanie in East Africa.

Mark Twain was writing the major part of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

The Samoans revolted against their German overlords.

The recording adding machine was invented by Burroughs; transparent photographic film, by Eastman; calcium carbide was by Willson.

Georg Brandes (Georg Morris Cohen) lectured on Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen, thus bringing Nietzsche to public notice.

Tarzan, a superman unlike the one of which Nietzsche dreamed, was born on the west coast of Equatorial Africa.

CHAPTER ONE

(I-1)

Out to Sea

Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, Fearless for unknown shores …

–Walt Whitman

Without wine, we would never have known the story of the most famous adventurer since Odysseus or of the strongest man since Samson.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, an American writer, had dinner with a retired official of the British Colonial Office. The official had more than a few drinks, but Burroughs was moderate that winter evening of 1911. He clearly remembered the Englishman’s story the next day.

The host’s pride was hurt by Burroughs’ skepticism. He obtained old records from the files of the Colonial Office and also a diary of a long-dead man to ‘prove’ his exceedingly strange story.

Half-convinced, the American dug into all the records to which he could get access. Inspired by what he read, he wrote a biography which is, in the main, faithful to the facts. However, there were gaps which he had to fill in with guesses. Some of these hit near the mark and some missed the target completely. The book was first published as Tarzan of the Apes in the October, 1912, issue of The All-Story Magazine. Burroughs left out much which he did not think necessary to include because the biography was presented as pure fiction. It is the purpose of this ‘private life’ to fill in the gaps and to correct or explain certain puzzling features and seeming discrepancies.

Burroughs would have been thirteen years old in 1888 (after September 1). He wrote Tarzan of the Apes between December 1, 1911, and May 14, 1912, when he was thirty-five years old. Since he had never been to England, he would have had to get his facts and surmises about the ‘Greystoke case’ from a man who had just returned from England to Chicago. No human being outside of a few isolated blacks knew that Tarzan existed until February, 1909. The civilized world could not have known about Tarzan until about July, 1909. Between then and December, 1911, probably late in 1910, Burroughs talked to the man who had pried the Tarzan story out of the retired official. For greater verisimilitude and speed of narration, Burroughs pretended to be the very man from whom he got the information.

The story begins in 1888, but first we must examine the background of ‘a certain young English nobleman, whom we shall call John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.’ Burroughs used the ‘Greystoke’ to include several different titles, since John Clayton would not have borne the same title as his father, who was still living. Clayton would not have been a nobleman. The children of peers still living are considered to be commoners. But the eldest son of an earl, marquis, or duke is usually known socially by the name of his father’s next peerage. If Clayton’s father’s title was Duke Greyminster, for example, Clayton could have called himself Lord Saltire, because his father was also Marquess Saltire. Burroughs concealed the real titles of the family under the catchall of ‘Greystoke’ because he respected the privacy of this ancient family, which was especially sensitive to publicity. A. Conan Doyle, Dr. Watson’s literary agent, or perhaps Watson himself, did the same for this very family, if Professor H. W. Starr’s theory is correct. Doyle (or Watson) concealed the name of the family as Holdernesse in The Adventure of the Priory School. Doyle (or Watson) forgot to correct Holmes’ slip in referring to the ‘Duke of Greyminster’ in The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier. ‘Greyminster’ was also a pseudonym but it was much closer to the real title of the duke, perhaps too close. It was the ‘Greyminster’ that gave me the clue I needed to track down the real identity of the man known as Tarzan.

The original manuscript of Tarzan of the Apes gave Clayton’s title as ‘Bloomstoke.’ Burroughs, who delighted in codes, could not, however, resist a stronger hint about the real identity of Clayton, so he changed the initial syllable of the title back to ‘Grey.’ Addendum 2 describes in detail Burroughs’ method of coding, and, in addition, Doyle’s and Watson’s. But it is necessary to read Addendum 1 first. This is an article, A Case of Identity, by H. W. Starr, which originally appeared in the Baker Street Journal The researches of Mr. Starr into the true identity of the ‘Grey-stokes’ are admirable and highly ingenious, though his conclusions have been modified and expanded by me in Addendum 2.

Mr. Starr makes a strong case that John Clayton, a cabdriver in The Hound of the Baskervilles, was actually the eccentric fifth duke of Greyminster and Tarzan’s grandfather. Mr. Starr concludes that the sixth duke of The Adventure of the Priory School was the younger brother of the John Clayton who disappeared on the Fuwalda. A study of the dates and other facts convinced me that the sixth duke was, instead, the younger brother of the fifth duke. He was the uncle, not the brother, of the John Clayton who became Tarzan’s father. Addendum 2 details the argument and also gives the genealogy and the relatives of the ‘Greystoke’ family since 1795.

In 1888, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, was selected to make a secret investigation of conditions in a British west coast African territory. Most readers of Tarzan of the Apes have assumed that the ‘friendly European power’ was Belgium. They are thinking of King Leopold’s alleged exploitation of the natives of the Congo Free State. But the nearest British West African territory (not a colony) was the Niger River (Oil Rivers) area. It would be very unlikely that Belgians would be recruiting native soldiers almost eight hundred miles away for operations along the Congo and Aruwimi rivers. Moreover, 1888 was a few years too early for the kind of exploitation of which Leopold’s private company was accused. Burroughs knew this but deliberately threw his readers off the track here, as he did at a number of other places, to help obscure the identity and the mission of ‘Lord Greystoke.’

Clayton was given a position in the Royal Niger Company, which had succeeded the National African Company in 1886. This chartered commercial organization was given complete control of the Nigerian area north of the Niger Coast (Oil Rivers) Protectorate.

Ostensibly, John Clayton had resigned his recently acquired position in the British Colonial Office to take up his new job as a civilian administrator-explorer. His area of investigation was to be, at first, just west of the Kamerun, a territory claimed by the Germans only five days before the British tried to seize it in 1884. It was the Germans who were up to something on the Niger–Kamerun border, and Clayton was to find out what they were doing. In addition, he would be making surveys of the topography and the mineral resources. After reporting on the Germans, he was to proceed north and ascertain what the French were doing there in their push to claim more African lands.

Clayton was twenty-four years old, six feet two inches tall, and weighed 195 pounds. If the Olympics had existed then, he could have been as famous an athlete as Jim Thorpe was to be. His face was handsome but very masculine. He had the straight nose, square chin, and short upper lip that his famous son would inherit. His eyes were as dark grey as the winter skies of his native Yorkshire. His hair was almost as black as the hair of the natives he had commanded during his service in the Indian Army.

John Clayton had served as a captain in the Pioneers of the Corps of Madras Sappers and Miners (the Queen’s Own). His colonel, Sebastian Moran, took him along on the extended hunting trip in East India of which Moran wrote in Three Months in the Jungle (1884). He is the John Clayton whose near-fatal mauling by a tiger is described in Chapter 12. Clayton anticipated his famous son’s proclivities by killing the great cat with a hunting knife. But he was so badly hurt that he was invalided home. While recuperating, he decided to resign from the military and make the Colonial Office his career.

Clayton came from an ancient and distinguished lineage. Though Greystoke was not, in actuality, among the titles he would inherit someday, he was descended from the de Greystocks of Greystoke Manor, Cumberland, through several different lines. His family was related to the Howards, d’Arcys, Percys, Nevilles, Cavendishes, Drummonds, and a number of other noble families. He was also descended from the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts.

Clayton was a graduate of Chatham, the royal military engineering college. His experience in the Indian Army, and his powerful connections, could have taken him high up in the military. But, tired of army life, he preferred the Colonial Office, which was swiftly expanding with the growth of Britain’s overseas empire. Almost at once, he was given the mission to the Niger.

He was both thrilled and dismayed. He had been married in late February to the Honorable Alice Rutherford, daughter of Baron Tennington. She was eighteen years old, a beauty with dark hair and large grey eyes almost the same shade as those of her husband. The Rutherfords were an ancient and distinguished family of the Scottish border. ‘Rutherford’ derives from an Old English place name, hrythera ford (horned cattle of the ford). The arms of Alice’s family bore a wild bull’s head and a wild man’s head between the horns. This was appropriate, since her son would be as strong and as fierce as a wild bull. Yet he would be singularly controlled by his human intelligence.

The marriage, which was also a double wedding, was one of the great social events of 1888. Clayton’s uncle William Cecil, had decided, at the age of fifty-two, to marry. His bride, the wealthy widow of a peer, had resumed her maiden name for reasons known best to herself. Edith was the daughter of the wealthy and recently knighted financier, Sir John Jansenius. (Watson gives him a different name.) William Cecil, brother to the fifth duke, was a very distinguished statesman and politician. In recognition of his services, Queen Victoria had granted him the titles of Marquess of Exminster and Viscount Passmore. At this time, he was intent on getting his older brother certified insane so that young John Clayton could legally take over the administration of the family estate.

The wedding promised to be not only a happy one but a brilliant one. It was attended by prominent relatives: the dukes of Norfolk, of Westminster, and of Pomver; the earls of Lovelace, of Carlisle, of Perth, and of Burlesdon; the barons of Tennington, Dunsany, Byron, Inchiquin, and Ruthven; and, the most distinguished, the Prince of Wales. Young Clayton’s best friend, his tall red-haired cousin, Rudolph, himself soon to make a fateful voyage, was present.

The most outstanding guest was an uninvited cabdriver. He was the younger groom’s eccentric father and the older groom’s older brother. The fifth duke, John Clayton I, had disgraced his family by becoming a fanatical Socialist, hobnobbing with Karl Marx, Annie Besant, and George Bernard Shaw. (Shaw told the fifth duke’s story in his novel, An Unsocial Socialist, though he changed names and dates and omitted some things to keep from being sued or perhaps even caned. See Addendum 2 for the full story.) John Clayton I had moved to London to become a common workingman, and he refused to touch any of the great fortune he derived from his estates. He was as fierce an individualist and as unconventional as his grandson would be.

John Clayton I, looking quite unducal in his cabdriver’s uniform, went through the crowd passing out socialist pamphlets, even offering one to Victoria’s son. The fifth duke had just gotten out of jail for the second time. The first time, he had been put on trial for seditious libel and sentenced to imprisonment, but his sentence was quashed when his counsel found a flaw in the indictment. He would be arrested again when he hit Karl Marx in the nose during their final argument.

Both grooms were mortified, and his son took him aside and argued violently with him. The two never saw each other again. This final estrangement so angered John Clayton II that he thought of his father as dead. This was why, on May 22, he wrote in his diary that his baby son was ‘the second John Clayton’ when he should have written ‘the third.’

The young John Clayton could not endure the thought of leaving his bride behind when he went to Africa. But he could not even wish that she go with him into that region appropriately named ‘the white man’s grave.’ Especially, he could not ask her because she was pregnant.

Alice Rutherford did not plead, storm, or wheedle. She insisted, firmly but quietly, that she was going. Clayton finally agreed but only on condition that she return to England at once if she got sick or found conditions intolerable.

On a bright May morning in 1888, the Claytons sailed from Dover for Freetown, the capital city of the British crown colony of Sierra Leone. The exact departure date and the name of the ship are unknown. Clayton did not start the diary which would end up in the files of the Colonial Office until several days before his arrival at Freetown. Apparently, the earlier diary was either lost or mailed back to England from Freetown.

(The port authorities of Dover state in a letter to me that the sailing date and the name of the ship are not available. They do not say why, so I can only guess that the records were destroyed by bombs during World War II or the ‘Greystoke’ family has made certain that they are not ‘available.’)

(Whitaker’s Almanack says of May, 1888, ‘The weather was mostly fine, and there was much sunshine.’ However, to the English, any day, no matter how gloomy, is ‘fine’ if it’s not raining. A reading of daily weather reports of the Times [London] and other journals indicates that May 11 or May 23 were the most likely to be bright all morning in Dover.)

A month later, the couple arrived in the hot, steaming, stinking, and muddy town. Lady Alice, knowing that this place was considered to be the most civilized area of west Africa, was sickened. Not wishing her husband to sense her true reaction, she smiled and laughed and exclaimed over this and that exotic item.

John Clayton recorded in his diary that Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer and linguist, and a distant cousin, had visited Freetown in 1862. Burton, Clayton wrote, had liked Freetown even less than his wife Alice liked it. Evidently, she had not fooled him. He noted also that Sierra Leone was probably the terminus of the famous voyage of Hanno the Carthaginian. There were no gorillas in west Africa in 1888, but Hanno may have encountered some in 500 B.C.

A few days later, they boarded a small ship, the barkentine Fuwalda. Clayton had chartered this coastwise trader-freighter to take them to a small village on a tributary of the Niger River. (This site was to be called Obomotu, and, even later, Port Harcourt.) From there, the Claytons would travel up the river and then cut across the country to the Niger–Kamerun border.

They were never seen again.

Two months later, while British naval vessels were searching for the Fuwalda, its wreckage was discovered on the shores of St. Helena, the island where Napoleon died in exile in 1821.

(This same year, 1821, the famous explorer of Africa, Richard Francis Burton, and the famous explorer of the dark continent of the psyche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, were born. It was also the year in which Siger Holmes, Sherlock’s father, was born, if W. S. Baring-Gould is right. It is worthwhile noting that Siger Holmes, like John Clayton, was invalided home from military service in India. The ‘friend’ whom Baring-Gould mentions as being involved with Siger in the accident that crippled him was his relative, Richard Francis Burton. Burton was an officer of the 18th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry, stationed at Bandor Gharra, Sind, south of Karachi. Siger, a cavalry lieutenant, was visiting him).

After leaving Freetown, the barkentine began its zigzag path toward its destination. It was pushed along by the eastward-going Guinea current, but the southeast trade winds forced the vessel to beat about. It was making about eight knots an hour in a hard wind, which was remarkably swift, considering that the Fuwalda was not run in a very efficient manner. Its crew was composed of misfits and criminals of many nations and all races, excluding the Australian aborigine. Its officers were not much better than the crew.

The morning of the second day out from Freetown, the Claytons witnessed a shocking incident, the first of many. They had just finished talking to Captain Billings, a big, broad-shouldered, round-paunched, red-eyed man who always needed a shave. He turned away from them and fell over the back of a little old sailor on his hands and knees scrubbing the deck (because Clayton had complained about its filthiness). The captain sprawled on his face, knocking over the bucket full of dirty water and soaking him.

Alice gave a little shriek. John smiled. He did not mind seeing the loud-mouthed, ill-smelling brute mortified. But he lost his smile when Billings, cursing, leaped up and struck the old sailor to the deck.

The other sailor, Black Michael, was as big as the captain and looked even meaner. His black mustachios stuck out like the horns of a bull, which he resembled in figure and ferocity. Bellowing, he struck the captain to his knees with a single blow of his fist.

The captain’s face changed from red to white. Still on his knees, he pulled his revolver from his pants pocket and fired at the giant.

But Clayton struck down the captain’s arm so that the bullet, a 44-10, hit the side of the sailor’s calf instead. It gouged out a chunk of flesh, and blood ran down his leg, but the bullet had not seriously wounded him.

Clayton roared, ‘What kind of a beast are you? You don’t kill a man for that!’

Furiously, he denounced the officers for their brutalities and declared that he wanted no more such incidents. Otherwise, the British authorities would hear about the Fuwalda.

The captain, shaking and white, walked off. Black Michael, supporting the little sailor, limped off, but not before he had growled, ‘Thanks, Mr. Clayton.’

(Dale Walker has suggested, and John Harwood has developed, the connection between Black Michael and Watson’s Black Peter Michael Cary of The Adventure of Black Peter. I believe that Black Michael was indeed the same man and that he had other reasons than humanity for sparing the Claytons. I also believe that the fifth duke was murdered by Black Michael and that one of the men we know as Sherlock Holmes investigated the case. This will be explained in Chapter 10. Refer also to Addendum 4.)

From then on, the officers avoided the Claytons as much as possible. This did not displease the Claytons, since they had nothing in common with the sullen and dirty brutes. But, though isolated, they could feel the ominous air which settled down like a great spider web over the ship.

The fourth day out, Clayton came up from the companionway just in time to see an unconscious sailor being carried off. The first mate was holding a bloody belaying pin.

The fifth day, when Clayton saw a British warship bearing down on them, he thought about transferring to it. But what excuse could he give to the captain of the warship? He had seen some brutality, and that was all. Nobody had threatened the Claytons. He would be thought a coward, and his mission would be aborted or delayed.

Before the upper works of the ship had disappeared over the horizon, he regretted his decision, which he now knew came from false pride. The old sailor whom Billings had knocked down had warned Clayton that he and his wife should stay below if they heard any shooting.

Clayton told Alice about this. She insisted, despite his reluctance to help the captain, that he must warn him at once.

‘It’s a lie!’ Billings shouted, banging his fist on his desk in the tiny cabin. ‘And I’m getting tired of you sticking your blue-blooded needle nose into my business!’

There was much more, but Clayton waited until the purple-faced captain was out of breath. Then he drawled, ‘You’re a bit of an ass, don’t you know?’ and walked out. Returning to Alice, he told her they must go to their cabin at once and check on their revolvers. They found their quarters ransacked but only the guns and bullets missing.

‘What are we to do, John?’ she said. ‘Possibly our best chance for salvation lies in maintaining a neutral position.’

‘Right you are, Alice. We’ll keep in the middle of the road.’

They were to find that the self-declared neutral may be as much a victim as the defeated belligerent.

While they were straightening up the cabin, they saw a piece of paper being pushed under the door. Clayton strode to the door, but his wife seized his wrist and whispered that he should wait. The writer of the note would not wish to be identified, and they would be better off if they could not identify him.

A few minutes later, Clayton picked up the note and unfolded it. In crudely printed and misspelled words was a warning to keep their mouths shut about the stolen guns and about what the old sailor had told them. Otherwise -death for them.