Now he knew that something more than revenge had prompted Rokoff to
pitch him overboard--the Russian had managed to obtain possession
of the papers Tarzan had wrested from him at Bou Saada. The ape-man
swore softly, and let his coat and shirt sink into the Atlantic.
Before many hours he had divested himself of his remaining garments,
and was swimming easily and unencumbered toward the east.

The first faint evidence of dawn was paling the stars ahead of him
when the dim outlines of a low-lying black mass loomed up directly
in his track. A few strong strokes brought him to its side--it
was the bottom of a wave-washed derelict. Tarzan clambered upon
it--he would rest there until daylight at least. He had no intention
to remain there inactive--a prey to hunger and thirst. If he must
die he preferred dying in action while making some semblance of an
attempt to save himself.

The sea was quiet, so that the wreck had only a gently undulating
motion, that was nothing to the swimmer who had had no sleep for
twenty hours. Tarzan of the Apes curled up upon the slimy timbers,
and was soon asleep.

The heat of the sun awoke him early in the forenoon. His
first conscious sensation was of thirst, which grew almost to the
proportions of suffering with full returning consciousness; but a
moment later it was forgotten in the joy of two almost simultaneous
discoveries. The first was a mass of wreckage floating beside the
derelict in the midst of which, bottom up, rose and fell an overturned
lifeboat; the other was the faint, dim line of a far-distant shore
showing on the horizon in the east.