Tarzan the Untamed


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Presently, as he passed through a clump of bushes, he came to the edge of a low  
cliff and saw upon a ledge some fifteen feet below him a German soldier prone  
behind an embankment of loose rock and leafy boughs that hid him from the view  
of the British lines. The man must have been an excellent shot, for he was well  
back of the German lines, firing over the heads of his fellows. His high-powered  
rifle was equipped with telescope sights and he also carried binoculars which he  
was in the act of using as Tarzan discovered him, either to note the effect of his  
last shot or to discover a new target. Tarzan let his eye move quickly toward that  
part of the British line the German seemed to be scanning, his keen sight  
revealing many excellent targets for a rifle placed so high above the trenches.  
The Hun, evidently satisfied with his observations, laid aside his binoculars and  
again took up his rifle, placed its butt in the hollow of his shoulder and took  
careful aim. At the same instant a brown body sprang outward from the cliff  
above him. There was no sound and it is doubtful that the German ever knew  
what manner of creature it was that alighted heavily upon his back, for at the  
instant of impact the sinewy fingers of the ape-man circled the hairy throat of the  
Boche. There was a moment of futile struggling followed by the sudden realization  
of dissolution--the sniper was dead.  
Lying behind the rampart of rocks and boughs, Tarzan looked down upon the  
scene below. Near at hand were the trenches of the Germans. He could see  
officers and men moving about in them and almost in front of him a well-hidden  
machine gun was traversing No Man's Land in an oblique direction, striking the  
British at such an angle as to make it difficult for them to locate it.  
Tarzan watched, toying idly with the rifle of the dead German. Presently he fell to  
examining the mechanism of the piece. He glanced again toward the German  
trenches and changed the adjustment of the sights, then he placed the rifle to his  
shoulder and took aim. Tarzan was an excellent shot. With his civilized friends he  
had hunted big game with the weapons of civilization and though he never had  
killed except for food or in self-defense he had amused himself firing at inanimate  
targets thrown into the air and had perfected himself in the use of firearms  
without realizing that he had done so. Now indeed would he hunt big game. A  
slow smile touched his lips as his finger closed gradually upon the trigger. The  
rifle spoke and a German machine gunner collapsed behind his weapon. In three  
minutes Tarzan picked off the crew of that gun. Then he spotted a German officer  
emerging from a dugout and the three men in the bay with him. Tarzan was  
careful to leave no one in the immediate vicinity to question how Germans could  
be shot in German trenches when they were entirely concealed from enemy view.  
Again adjusting his sights he took a long-range shot at a distant machine-gun  
crew to his right. With calm deliberation he wiped them out to a man. Two guns  
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