In this
event the bull would, according to custom, approach quite close to
the object of his attention, growling hideously and baring slavering
fangs. Slowly he would circle about the other, as though with a
chip upon his shoulder; and this he did, even as Tarzan had foreseen.
It might be a bluff royal, or, on the other hand, so unstable is
the mind of an ape, a passing impulse might hurl the hairy mass,
tearing and rending, upon the man without an instant's warning.
As the brute circled him Tarzan turned slowly, keeping his eyes
ever upon the eyes of his antagonist. He had appraised the young
bull as one who had never quite felt equal to the task of overthrowing
his former king, but who one day would have done so. Tarzan saw
that the beast was of wondrous proportions, standing over seven
feet upon his short, bowed legs.
His great, hairy arms reached almost to the ground even when he
stood erect, and his fighting fangs, now quite close to Tarzan's
face, were exceptionally long and sharp. Like the others of his
tribe, he differed in several minor essentials from the apes of
Tarzan's boyhood.
At first the ape-man had experienced a thrill of hope at sight of
the shaggy bodies of the anthropoids--a hope that by some strange
freak of fate he had been again returned to his own tribe; but a
closer inspection had convinced him that these were another species.
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