lean strength that was his. But though he felt his blows
land, and his teeth sink into soft flesh, there seemed always two new
hands to take the place of those that he fought off. At last they
dragged him down, and slowly, very slowly, they overcame him by the
mere weight of their numbers. And then they bound him--his hands
behind his back and his feet trussed up to meet them. He had heard no
sound except the heavy breathing of his antagonists, and the noise of
the battle. He knew not what manner of creatures had captured him, but
that they were human seemed evident from the fact that they had bound
him.

Presently they lifted him from the floor, and half dragging, half
pushing him, they brought him out of the black chamber through another
doorway into an inner courtyard of the temple. Here he saw his
captors. There must have been a hundred of them--short, stocky men,
with great beards that covered their faces and fell upon their hairy
breasts.

The thick, matted hair upon their heads grew low over their receding
brows, and hung about their shoulders and their backs. Their crooked
legs were short and heavy, their arms long and muscular. About their
loins they wore the skins of leopards and lions, and great necklaces of
the claws of these same animals depended upon their breasts. Massive
circlets of virgin gold adorned their arms and legs. For weapons they
carried heavy, knotted bludgeons, and in the belts that confined their
single garments each had a long, wicked-looking knife.

But the feature of them that made the most startling impression upon
their prisoner was their white skins--neither in color nor feature was
there a trace of the negroid about them. Yet, with their receding
foreheads, wicked little close-set eyes, and yellow fangs, they were
far from prepossessing in appearance.

During the fight within the dark chamber, and while they had been
dragging Tarzan to the inner court, no word had been spoken, but now
several of them exchanged grunting, monosyllabic conversation in a
language unfamiliar to the ape-man, and presently they left him lying
upon the concrete floor while they trooped off on their short legs into
another part of the temple beyond the court.

As Tarzan lay there upon his back he saw that the temple entirely
surrounded the little inclosure, and that on all sides its lofty walls
rose high above him. At the top a little patch of blue sky was
visible, and, in one direction, thr