Clayton but stood
in lethargic apathy awaiting the impact of the huge body that would
hurl her to the ground--awaiting the momentary agony that cruel talons
and grisly fangs may inflict before the coming of the merciful oblivion
which would end her sorrow and her suffering.

What use to attempt escape? As well face the hideous end as to be
dragged down from behind in futile flight. She did not even close her
eyes to shut out the frightful aspect of that snarling face, and so it
was that as she saw the lion preparing to charge she saw, too, a
bronzed and mighty figure leap from an overhanging tree at the instant
that Numa rose in his spring.

Wide went her eyes in wonder and incredulity, as she beheld this
seeming apparition risen from the dead. The lion was forgotten--her
own peril--everything save the wondrous miracle of this strange
recrudescence. With parted lips, with palms tight pressed against her
heaving bosom, the girl leaned forward, large-eyed, enthralled by the
vision of her dead mate.

She saw the sinewy form leap to the shoulder of the lion, hurtling
against the leaping beast like a huge, animate battering ram. She saw
the carnivore brushed aside as he was almost upon her, and in the
instant she realized that no substanceless wraith could thus turn the
charge of a maddened lion with brute force greater than the brute's.

Tarzan, her Tarzan, lived! A cry of unspeakable gladness broke from
her lips, only to die in terror as she saw the utter defenselessness of
her mate, and realized that the lion had recovered himself and was
turning upon Tarzan in mad lust for vengeance.

At the ape-man's feet lay the discarded rifle of the dead Abyssinian
whose mutilated corpse sprawled where Numa had abandoned it. The quick
glance which had swept the ground for some weapon of defense discovered
it, and as the lion reared upon his hind legs to seize the rash
man-thing who had dared interpose its puny strength between Numa and
his prey, the heavy stock whirred through the air and splintered upon
the broad forehead.

Not as an ordinary mortal might strike a blow did Tarzan of the Apes
strike; but with the maddened frenzy of a wild beast backed by the
steel thews which his wild, arboreal boyhood had bequeathed him. When
the blow ended the splintered stock was driven through the splintered
skull into the savage brain, and the heavy iron barrel was bent into a
rude V.

In the instant that the lion sank, lifeles