Awaiting him stood Tarzan, himself a mighty muscled animal,

but his six feet of height and his great rolling sinews

seemed pitifully inadequate to the ordeal which awaited them.

His bow and arrows lay some distance away where he had

dropped them while showing Sabor's hide to his fellow apes,

so that he confronted Kerchak now with only his hunting

knife and his superior intellect to offset the ferocious

strength of his enemy.

As his antagonist came roaring toward him, Lord Greystoke

tore his long knife from its sheath, and with an answering

challenge as horrid and bloodcurdling as that of the beast

he faced, rushed swiftly to meet the attack. He was too

shrewd to allow those long hairy arms to encircle him, and

just as their bodies were about to crash together, Tarzan of

the Apes grasped one of the huge wrists of his assailant, and,

springing lightly to one side, drove his knife to the hilt into

Kerchak's body, below the heart.

Before he could wrench the blade free again, the bull's

quick lunge to seize him in those awful arms had torn the

weapon from Tarzan's grasp.

Kerchak aimed a terrific blow at the ape-man's head with the

flat of his hand, a blow which, had it landed, might easily

have crushed in the side of Tarzan's skull.

The man was too quick, and, ducking beneath it, himself

delivered a mighty one, with clenched fist, in the pit of

Kerchak's stomach.

The ape was staggered, and what with the mortal wound in

his side had almost collapsed, when, with one mighty effort

he rallied for an instant--just long enough to enable him to

wrest his arm free from Tarzan's grasp and close in a terrific

clinch with his wiry opponent.

Straining the ape-man close to him, his great jaws sought

Tarzan's throat, but the young lord's sinewy fingers were at

Kerchak's own before the cruel fangs could close on the sleek

brown skin.