it fall with terrific velocity and meet the lion as he rose to
grapple with the man, cleaving his skull as cleanly as a butcher
opens up a sheep.

Then she heard footsteps running rapidly toward Smith-Oldwick and,
as his pistol spoke, there was a scream and the sound of a falling
body. Evidently disheartened by the failure of their first attempt
the assaulters drew off, but only for a short time. Again they came,
this time a man opposing Tarzan and a lion seeking to overcome
Smith-Oldwick. Tarzan had cautioned the young Englishman not
to waste his cartridges upon the lions and it was Otobu with the
Xujan spear who met the beast, which was not subdued until both
he and Smith-Oldwick had been mauled, and the latter had succeeded
in running the point of the saber the girl had carried, into the
beast's heart. The man who opposed Tarzan inadvertently came too
close in an attempt to cut at the ape-man's head, with the result
that an instant later his corpse lay with the neck broken upon the
body of the lion.

Once again the enemy withdrew, but again only for a short time,
and now they came in full force, the lions and the men, possibly
a half dozen of each, the men casting their spears and the lions
waiting just behind, evidently for the signal to charge.

"Is this the end?" asked the girl.

"No," cried the ape-man, "for we still live!"

The words had scarcely passed his lips when the remaining warriors,
rushing in, cast their spears simultaneously from both sides. In
attempting to shield the girl, Tarzan received one of the shafts
in the shoulder, and so heavily had the weapon been hurled that it
bore him backward to the ground. Smith-Oldwick fired his pistol
twice when he too was struck down, the weapon entering his right
leg midway between hip and knee. Only Otobu remained to face the
enemy, for the Englishman, already weak from his wounds and from
the latest mauling he had received at the claws of the lion, had
lost consciousness as he sank to the ground with this new hurt.

As he fell his pistol dropped from his fingers, and the girl, seeing,
snatched it up. As Tarzan struggled to rise, one of the warriors
leaped full upon his breast and bore him back as, with fiendish
shrieks, he raised the point of his saber above the other's heart.
Before he could drive it home the girl leveled Smith-Oldwick's
pistol and fired point-blank at the fiend's face.

Simultaneously there broke upon the astonished ears of both atta