as to who should have first
place. A burly brute with all the refined intelligence of a gorilla
stamped upon his bestial face was attempting to push a smaller man to
second place, but the smaller one appealed to the high priestess, who
in a cold peremptory voice sent the larger to the extreme end of the
line. Tarzan could hear him growling and rumbling as he went slowly to
the inferior station.

Then the priestess, standing above him, began reciting what Tarzan took
to be an invocation, the while she slowly raised her thin, sharp knife
aloft. It seemed ages to the ape-man before her arm ceased its upward
progress and the knife halted high above his unprotected breast.

Then it started downward, slowly at first, but as the incantation
increased in rapidity, with greater speed. At the end of the line
Tarzan could still hear the grumbling of the disgruntled priest. The
man's voice rose louder and louder. A priestess near him spoke in
sharp tones of rebuke. The knife was quite near to Tarzan's breast
now, but it halted for an instant as the high priestess raised her eyes
to shoot her swift displeasure at the instigator of this sacrilegious
interruption.

There was a sudden commotion in the direction of the disputants, and
Tarzan rolled his head in their direction in time to see the burly
brute of a priest leap upon the woman opposite him, dashing out her
brains with a single blow of his heavy cudgel. Then that happened
which Tarzan had witnessed a hundred times before among the wild
denizens of his own savage jungle. He had seen the thing fall upon
Kerchak, and Tublat, and Terkoz; upon a dozen of the other mighty bull
apes of his tribe; and upon Tantor, the elephant; there was scarce any
of the males of the forest that did not at times fall prey to it. The
priest went mad, and with his heavy bludgeon ran amuck among his
fellows.

His screams of rage were frightful as he dashed hither and thither,
dealing terrific blows with his giant weapon, or sinking his yellow
fangs into the flesh of some luckless victim. And during it the
priestess stood with poised knife above Tarzan, her eyes fixed in
horror upon the maniacal thing that was dealing out death and
destruction to her votaries.

Presently the room was emptied except for the dead and dying on the
floor, the victim upon the altar, the high priestess, and the madman.
As the cunning eyes of the latter fell upon the woman they lighted with
a new and sudden lu