ough an embrasure, he could see
foliage, but whether it was beyond or within the temple he did not know.

About the court, from the ground to the top of the temple, were series
of open galleries, and now and then the captive caught glimpses of
bright eyes gleaming from beneath masses of tumbling hair, peering down
upon him from above.

The ape-man gently tested the strength of the bonds that held him, and
while he could not be sure it seemed that they were of insufficient
strength to withstand the strain of his mighty muscles when the time
came to make a break for freedom; but he did not dare to put them to
the crucial test until darkness had fallen, or he felt that no spying
eyes were upon him.

He had lain within the court for several hours before the first rays of
sunlight penetrated the vertical shaft; almost simultaneously he heard
the pattering of bare feet in the corridors about him, and a moment
later saw the galleries above fill with crafty faces as a score or more
entered the courtyard.

For a moment every eye was bent upon the noonday sun, and then in
unison the people in the galleries and those in the court below took up
the refrain of a low, weird chant. Presently those about Tarzan began
to dance to the cadence of their solemn song. They circled him slowly,
resembling in their manner of dancing a number of clumsy, shuffling
bears; but as yet they did not look at him, keeping their little eyes
fixed upon the sun.

For ten minutes or more they kept up their monotonous chant and steps,
and then suddenly, and in perfect unison, they turned toward their
victim with upraised bludgeons and emitting fearful howls, the while
they contorted their features into the most diabolical expressions,
they rushed upon him.

At the same instant a female figure dashed into the midst of the
bloodthirsty horde, and, with a bludgeon similar to their own, except
that it was wrought from gold, beat back the advancing men.

Chapter 20

La

For a moment Tarzan thought that by some strange freak of fate a
miracle had saved him, but when he realized the ease with which the
girl had, single-handed, beaten off twenty gorilla-like males, and an
instant later, as he saw them again take up their dance about him while
she addressed them in a singsong monotone, which bore every evidence of
rote, he came to the conclusion that it was all but a part of the
ceremony of which he was the central figure.

After a moment or t