Tarzan and Jane’s life is shattered when Nikolas Rokoff and Alexis Paulvitch kidnap Jane and their infant son Jack. Stranded on a jungle island, Tarzan forms an improvised alliance with Akut and the great apes, Sheeta the panther and the warrior Mugambi, then pursues the kidnappers into the African interior.
The pursuit moves through an early-twentieth-century world of steamships, river travel, trading posts and colonial mobility, giving the rescue story a recognisable historical frame. Against that setting, Burroughs turns Tarzan's command of animals and alliances in the jungle into the driving force of a fast-moving revenge adventure.
