ould see the two men drop him to the ground so that they might slam the
cage-door shut. Inside, in so wildly struggling a tangle on the floor
that it was difficult to discern what animals composed it, were Alphonso,
Jack, and Michael looked together. Men danced about outside, thrusting
in with iron bars and trying to separate them. In the far end of the
cage were the other two leopards, nursing their wounds and snarling and
striking at the iron rods that kept them out of the combat.

Sara's arrival and what followed was a matter of seconds. Trailing her
chain behind her, the little green monkey, the tailed female who knew
love and hysteria and was remote cousin to human women, flashed up to the
narrow cage-bars and squeezed through. Simultaneously the tangle
underwent a violent upheaval. Flung out with such force as to be smashed
against the near end of the cage, Michael fell to the floor, tried to
spring up, but crumpled and sank down, his right shoulder streaming blood
from a terrible mauling and crushing. To him Sara leaped, throwing her
arms around him and mothering him up to her flat little hairy breast. She
uttered solicitous cries, and, as Michael strove to rise on his ruined
foreleg, scolded him with sharp gentleness and with her arms tried to
hold him away from the battle. Also, in an interval, her eyes malevolent
in her rage, she chattered piercing curses at Alphonso.

A crowbar, shoved into his side, distracted the big leopard. He struck
at the weapon with his paw, and, when it was poked into him again, flung
himself upon it, biting the naked iron with his teeth. With a second
fling he was against the cage bars, with a single slash of paw ripping
down the forearm of the man who had poked him. The crowbar was dropped
as the man leaped away. Alphonso flung back on Jack, a sorry antagonist
by this time, who could only pant and quiver where he lay in the welter
of what was left of him.

Michael had managed to get up on his three legs and was striving to
stumble forward against the restraining arms of Sara. The mad leopard
was on the verge of springing upon them when deflected by another prod of
the iron. This time he went straight at the man, fetching up against the
cage-bars with such fierceness as to shake the structure.

More men began thrusting with more rods, but Alphonso was not to be
balked. Sara saw him coming and screamed her shrillest and savagest at
him. Collins snatched a revolver f