During the seconds in which all this transpired, Tharn had discovered what it was that had leaped cat-like upon him. He saw a great hulk of a man, naked except for a pelt about his loins; a man with muscles bulging so in arms, legs and shoulders as to constitute a deformity. He was not quite so tall as Tharn, with an ugly, hairy face, contorted with rage.
With the speed of a striking snake Tharn's hands came up, caught the wrists at his throat and tore away those choking fingers as though they were so many strands of cobweb. Then Tharn seized the other before he could twist free—caught him by thrusting an arm between the crotch of those gnarled legs while the other hand held to a hairy forearm. Lifting him thus, Tharn swung the man aloft like a bundle of grass, then flung him heavily to the sands a dozen paces away.
The onlookers came to their feet with a swelling roar of approval. This was what they had come to see; and they set up a deafening clamor that seemed to shake the stands. Tharn never heard them.
Now the dazed enemy was scrambling to his feet. Before he was fully erect, Tharn was upon him with the silent ferocity of Jalok, the panther. Grabbing the cringing man by the throat, the cave-man lifted him bodily from the sands, and holding him at forearm's length, shook him as a terrier shakes a rodent; shook him until the screaming voice was stilled as the senses fled and the white figure hung limp and motionless within Tharn's grasp.
Then, while the crowd watched in thrilled horror, Tharn dropped to one knee, placed the dead weight of his unconscious foe against his leg and snapped the man's spine as he might have broken a slender branch.
Rising, Tharn tossed aside the lifeless body and, not deigning to acknowledge by look or gestures the pandemonium of acclaim, disappeared through the arms-room door.
On the same morning that the Sepharian Games had opened, a band of fifty warriors, clothed only in animal skins about their middles, halted on the outskirts of an impenetrable forest which towered across their path. At their backs was a broad prairie that had required many days to cross.
The leader of the group, a man of heroic proportions, called together three of the men and engaged them in earnest conversation. Several times he gestured toward the mouth of a game trail leading into the jungle; but the others continued to shake their heads as though unconvinced.