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308 four were now facing the thoroughly infuriated beasts.

Both animals, bleeding from many wounds, were mad with pain, rage and hunger. Scream­ing and growling they threw themselves upon the swords of the two men, who had pushed the girls behind them and were backing slowly toward the gate, and then the man with the bench joined Tar­zan and Komodoflorensal and the three fought back the charges of the infuriated carnivora.

The bench proved fully as good a weapon of defense as the swords and so together the five drew slowly back, until, quite suddenly and with­out the slightest warning both cats leaped quickly to one side and darted behind the party as though sensing that the women would prove easier prey. One of them came near to closing upon Janzara had not the man with the bench, imbued appar­ently with demoniacal fury, leaped upon it with his strange weapon and beaten it back so desper­ately that it was forced to abandon the princess.

Even then the man did not cease to follow it, but, brandishing the bench, pursued it and its fel­low with such terrifying cries and prodigious blows that, to escape him, both cats suddenly dodged into the chamber that the man had oc­cupied, and before they could return to the attack he with the bench had slammed the gate and fas­tened them upon its opposite side. Then he wheeled and faced the four.