Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/108

 In the brief interval that the recognition required there sloughed from the heart and mind and soul of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones every particle of the civilization and culture and refinement that had required countless ages in the building, stripping him naked, age on age, down to the primordial beast that had begot his first human progenitor.

He saw red through blood as he leaped for the throat of the man-beast whose ruthless hands were upon Nadara.

His lip curled in the fighting snarl that exposed his long-unused canine fangs.

He forgot sword and shield and spear.

He was no longer a man, but a terrible beast; and the hairy brute that witnessed the metamorphosis blanched and shrank back in fear.

But he could not escape the fury of that mad charge or the raging creature that sought his throat.

For a moment they struggled in a surging, swaying embrace, and then toppled to the ground—the hairy one beneath.

Rolling, tearing, and biting, they battled—each seeking a death hold upon the other.

Time and again the gleaming teeth of the once-fastidious Bostonian sank into the breast and shoulder of his antagonist, but it was the jugular his primal instinct sought.

The girl and the old man had drawn away where