The novel picks up soon after where Tarzan of the Apes left off.
After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders, Tarzan becomes their chief..
He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri, and is adopted into the Waziri tribe.
Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore, and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he was brought up by the apes.
But Rokoff and Paulovitch are also aboard, and manage to ambush him and throw him overboard.
Afterward Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, a friend of Jane\'s.
A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff.
Tarzan is assigned to service in Algeria.
In return, Count Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in the French ministry of war.
Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence.
Later, in France, Rokoff tries time and again to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess\'s lover.
Tarzan thwarts the villains\' scheme, making them his deadly enemies.
Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess\'s brother.
On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch.
The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d\'Arnot.
The novel picks up soon after where Tarzan of the Apes left off
