But as time went on and the Herculean nature of their task became
more and more apparent they fell to grumbling, and to quarrelling
among themselves, so that to the other dangers were now added
dissension and suspicion.
More than before did Tarzan now fear to leave Jane among the half
brutes of the Kincaid's crew; but hunting he must do, for none other
could so surely go forth and return with meat as he. Sometimes
Mugambi spelled him at the hunting; but the black's spear and arrows
were never so sure of results as the rope and knife of the ape-man.
Finally the men shirked their work, going off into the jungle by
twos to explore and to hunt. All this time the camp had 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 of the castaways
upon the east coast of Jungle Island, another camp 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 blood of her officers
and the loyal members of her crew, for the Cowrie had fallen upon
bad days when it had shipped such men as Gust and Momulla the Maori
and that arch-fiend Kai Shang of Fachan.
There were others, too, ten of them all told, the scum of the
South Sea ports; but Gust and Momulla and Kai Shang were the brains
and cunning of the company.
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