But if he could use his teeth and hands to advantage, he found one even better versed in the school of savage warfare to which he had reverted, for Tarzan of the Apes closed with him, and they fell to the floor tearing and rending at one another like two bull apes; while the primitive priestess stood flattened against the wall, watching with wide, fear-fascinated eyes the growling, snapping beasts at her feet.
At last she saw the stranger close one mighty hand upon the throat of his antagonist, and as he forced the bruteman’s head far back rain blow after blow upon the upturned face. A moment later he threw the still thing from him, and, arising, shook himself like a lion. He placed a foot upon the carcass before him, and raised his head to give the victory cry of his kind, but as his eyes fell upon the opening above him leading into the temple of human sacrifice he thought better of his intended act.
The girl, who had been half paralyzed by fear as the two men fought, had just commenced to give thought to her probable fate now that, though released from the clutches of a madman, she had fallen into the hands of one whom but a moment before she had been upon the point of killing. She looked about for some means of escape. The black mouth of a diverging corridor was near at hand, but as she turned to dart into it the ape-man’s eyes fell upon her, and with a quick leap he was at her side, and a restraining hand was laid upon her arm.
“Wait!” said Tarzan of the Apes, in the language of the tribe of Kerchak.
The girl looked at him in astonishment.
“Who are you,” she whispered, “who speaks the language of the first man?”
“I am Tarzan of the Apes,” he answered in the vernacular of the anthropoids.
“What do you want of me?” she continued. “For what purpose did you save me from Tha?”
“I could not see a woman murdered?” It was a half question that answered her.
“But what do you intend to do with me now?” she continued.