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When Tarzan reached the trench and emerged into it there was no one in sight in

that particular bay, nor in the next, nor the next as he hurried forward in the

direction of the German center; but in the fourth bay he saw a dozen men

jammed in the angle of the traverse at the end while leaping upon them and

rending with talons and fangs was Numa, a terrific incarnation of ferocity and

ravenous hunger.

Whatever held the men at last gave way as they fought madly with one another in

their efforts to escape this dread creature that from their infancy had filled them

with terror, and again they were retreating. Some clambered over the parados and

some even over the parapet preferring the dangers of No Man's Land to this other

soul-searing menace.

As the British advanced slowly toward the German trenches, they first met

terrified blacks who ran into their arms only too willing to surrender. That

pandemonium had broken loose in the Hun trench was apparent to the

Rhodesians not only from the appearance of the deserters, but from the sounds of

screaming, cursing men which came clearly to their ears; but there was one that

baffled them for it resembled nothing more closely than the infuriated growling of

an angry lion.

And when at last they reached the trench, those farthest on the left of the

advancing Britishers heard a machine gun sputter suddenly before them and saw

a huge lion leap over the German parados with the body of a screaming Hun

soldier between his jaws and vanish into the shadows of the night, while

squatting upon a traverse to their left was Tarzan of the Apes with a machine gun

before him with which he was raking the length of the German trenches.

The foremost Rhodesians saw something else--they saw a huge German officer

emerge from a dugout just in rear of the ape-man. They saw him snatch up a

discarded rifle with bayonet fixed and creep upon the apparently unconscious

Tarzan. They ran forward, shouting warnings; but above the pandemonium of the

trenches and the machine gun their voices could not reach him. The German

leaped upon the parapet behind him--the fat hands raised the rifle butt aloft for

the cowardly downward thrust into the naked back and then, as moves Ara, the

lightning, moved Tarzan of the Apes.

It was no man who leaped forward upon that Boche officer, striking aside the

sharp bayonet as one might strike aside a straw in a baby's hand--it was a wild

beast and the roar of a wild beast was upon those savage lips, for as that strange

sense that Tarzan owned in common with the other jungle-bred creatures of his

wild domain warned him of the presence behind him and he had whirled to meet

the attack, his eyes had seen the corps and regimental insignia upon the other's

Tarzan the Untamed