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assailants with a bullet through the chest and pulled his trigger on the second,
only to have the hammer fall futilely upon an empty chamber. The cartridges in
his weapon were exhausted and the warrior with his razor-edged, gleaming saber
was upon him.
Tarzan raised his own weapon but once and that to divert a vicious cut for his
head. Then he was upon one of his assailants and before the fellow could regain
his equilibrium and leap back after delivering his cut, the ape-man had seized
him by the neck and crotch. Tarzan's other antagonist was edging around to one
side where he might use his weapon, and as he raised the blade to strike at the
back of the Tarmangani's neck, the latter swung the body of his comrade upward
so that it received the full force of the blow. The blade sank deep into the body of
the warrior, eliciting a single frightful scream, and then Tarzan hurled the dying
man in the face of his final adversary.
Smith-Oldwick, hard pressed and now utterly defenseless, had given up all hope
in the instant that he realized his weapon was empty, when, from his left, a living
bolt of black-maned ferocity shot past him to the breast of his opponent. Down
went the Xujan, his face bitten away by one snap of the powerful jaws of Numa of
the pit.
In the few seconds that had been required for the consummation of these rapidly
ensuing events, Otobu had dragged Bertha Kircher to the gate which he had
unbarred and thrown open, and with the vanquishing of the last of the active
guardsmen, the party passed out of the maniac city of Xuja into the outer
darkness beyond. At the same moment a half dozen lions rounded the last turn in
the road leading back toward the plaza, and at sight of them Numa of the pit
wheeled and charged. For a moment the lions of the city stood their ground, but
only for a moment, and then before the black beast was upon them, they turned
and fled, while Tarzan and his party moved rapidly toward the blackness of the
forest beyond the garden.
"Will they follow us out of the city?" Tarzan asked Otobu.
"Not at night," replied the black. "I have been a slave here for five years but never
have I known these people to leave the city by night. If they go beyond the forest
in the daytime they usually wait until the dawn of another day before they return,
as they fear to pass through the country of the black lions after dark. No, I think,
Master, that they will not follow us tonight, but tomorrow they will come, and, O
Bwana, then will they surely get us, or those that are left of us, for at least one
among us must be the toll of the black lions as we pass through their forest."
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