tead, he hastened on toward the point where he had left the tribe,
and when he had found them proudly exhibited the skin of Sabor, the
lioness.

"Look!" he cried, "Apes of Kerchak. See what Tarzan, the mighty
killer, has done. Who else among you has ever killed one of Numa's
people? Tarzan is mightiest amongst you for Tarzan is no ape. Tarzan
is--" But here he stopped, for in the language of the anthropoids
there was no word for man, and Tarzan could only write the word in
English; he could not pronounce it.

The tribe had gathered about to look upon the proof of his wondrous
prowess, and to listen to his words.

Only Kerchak hung back, nursing his hatred and his rage.

Suddenly something snapped in the wicked little brain of the
anthropoid. With a frightful roar the great beast sprang among the
assemblage.

Biting, and striking with his huge hands, he killed and maimed a dozen
ere the balance could escape to the upper terraces of the forest.

Frothing and shrieking in the insanity of his fury, Kerchak looked
about for the object of his greatest hatred, and there, upon a near-by
limb, he saw him sitting.

"Come down, Tarzan, great killer," cried Kerchak. "Come down and feel
the fangs of a greater! Do mighty fighters fly to the trees at the
first approach of danger?" And then Kerchak emitted the volleying
challenge of his kind.

Quietly Tarzan dropped to the ground. Breathlessly the tribe watched
from their lofty perches as Kerchak, still roaring, charged the
relatively puny figure.

Nearly seven feet stood Kerchak on his short legs. His enormous
shoulders were bunched and rounded with huge muscles. The back of his
short neck was as a single lump of iron sinew which bulged beyond the
base of his skull, so that his head seemed like a small ball protruding
from a huge mountain of flesh.

His back-drawn, snarling lips exposed his great fighting fangs, and his
little, wicked, blood-shot eyes gleamed in horrid reflection of his
madness.

Awaiting him stood Tarzan, himself a mighty muscled animal, but his six
feet of height and his great rolling sinews seemed pitifully inadequate
to the ordeal which awaited them.

His bow and arrows lay some distance away where he had dropped them
while showing Sabor's hide to his fellow apes, so that he confronted
Kerchak now with only his hunting knife and his superior intellect to
offset the ferocious strength of his enemy.

As his antagonist came roaring towar