quickly and seeing the hideous face of the gryf below him seized
a large fruit from a nearby branch and hurled it viciously at the
horned snout. The missile struck full between the creature's eyes,
resulting in a reaction that surprised the ape-man; it did not arouse
the beast to a show of revengeful rage as Tarzan had expected and
hoped; instead the creature gave a single vicious side snap at the
fruit as it bounded from his skull and then turned sulkily away,
walking off a few steps.

There was that in the act that recalled immediately to Tarzan's mind
similar action on the preceding day when the Tor-o-don had struck one
of the creatures across the face with his staff, and instantly there
sprung to the cunning and courageous brain a plan of escape from his
predicament that might have blanched the cheek of the most heroic.

The gambling instinct is not strong among creatures of the wild; the
chances of their daily life are sufficient stimuli for the beneficial
excitement of their nerve centers. It has remained for civilized man,
protected in a measure from the natural dangers of existence, to invent
artificial stimulants in the form of cards and dice and roulette
wheels. Yet when necessity bids there are no greater gamblers than the
savage denizens of the jungle, the forest, and the hills, for as
lightly as you roll the ivory cubes upon the green cloth they will
gamble with death--their own lives the stake.

And so Tarzan would gamble now, pitting the seemingly wild deductions
of his shrewd brain against all the proofs of the bestial ferocity of
his antagonists that his experience of them had adduced--against all
the age-old folklore and legend that had been handed down for countless
generations and passed on to him through the lips of Pan-at-lee.

Yet as he worked in preparation for the greatest play that man can make
in the game of life, he smiled; nor was there any indication of haste
or excitement or nervousness in his demeanor.

First he selected a long, straight branch about two inches in diameter
at its base. This he cut from the tree with his knife, removed the
smaller branches and twigs until he had fashioned a pole about ten feet
in length. This he sharpened at the smaller end. The staff finished to
his satisfaction he looked down upon the triceratops.

"Whee-oo!" he cried.

Instantly the beasts raised their heads and looked at him. From the
throat of one of them came faintly a low rumbling sound.