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an entire stranger to enter a community and, after having dispatched the king,

assume the leadership of the tribe himself, together with the fallen monarch's

mates.

On the other hand, if he made no attempt to follow them, they might move slowly

away from him, later to fight among themselves for the supremacy. That he could

be king of them, if he so chose, he was confident; but he was not sure he cared to

assume the sometimes irksome duties of that position, for he could see no

particular advantage to be gained thereby.

One of the younger apes, a huge, splendidly muscled brute, was edging

threateningly closer to the ape-man. Through his bared fighting fangs there

issued a low, sullen growl.

Tarzan watched his every move, standing rigid as a statue. To have fallen back a

step would have been to precipitate an immediate charge; to have rushed forward

to meet the other might have had the same result, or it might have put the

bellicose one to flight--it all depended upon the young bull's stock of courage.

To stand perfectly still, waiting, was the middle course. In this event the bull

would, according to custom, approach quite close to the object of his attention,

growling hideously and baring slavering fangs. Slowly he would circle about the

other, as though with a chip upon his shoulder; and this he did, even as Tarzan

had foreseen.

It might be a bluff royal, or, on the other hand, so unstable is the mind of an ape,

a passing impulse might hurl the hairy mass, tearing and rending, upon the man

without an instant's warning.

As the brute circled him Tarzan turned slowly, keeping his eyes ever upon the

eyes of his antagonist. He had appraised the young bull as one who had never

quite felt equal to the task of overthrowing his former king, but who one day

would have done so. Tarzan saw that the beast was of wondrous proportions,

standing over seven feet upon his short, bowed legs.

His great, hairy arms reached almost to the ground even when he stood erect,

and his fighting fangs, now quite close to Tarzan's face, were exceptionally long

and sharp. Like the others of his tribe, he differed in several minor essentials

from the apes of Tarzan's boyhood.

At first the ape-man had experienced a thrill of hope at sight of the shaggy bodies

of the anthropoids--a hope that by some strange freak of fate he had been again

returned to his own tribe; but a closer inspection had convinced him that these

were another species.

The Beasts of Tarzan