an-beast.

"They murdered my Waziri," he muttered; "they crucified Wasimbu,
son of Muviro."

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