Tarzan pushed Jane behind the cabin near which they had been standing,
and with a quick bound started for Rokoff. The men behind the
Russian, at least two of them, raised their rifles and fired at the
charging ape-man; but those behind them were otherwise engaged--for
up the monkey-ladder in their rear was thronging a hideous horde.
First came five snarling apes, huge, manlike beasts, with bared
fangs and slavering jaws; and after them a giant black warrior,
his long spear gleaming in the moonlight.
Behind him again scrambled another creature, and of all the horrid
horde it was this they most feared--Sheeta, the panther, with gleaming
jaws agape and fiery eyes blazing at them in the mightiness of his
hate and of his blood lust.
The shots that had been fired at Tarzan missed him, and he would
have been upon Rokoff in another instant had not the great coward
dodged backward between his two henchmen, and, screaming in hysterical
terror, bolted forward toward the forecastle.
For the moment Tarzan's attention was distracted by the two men
before him, so that he could not at the time pursue the Russian.
About him the apes and Mugambi were battling with the balance of
the Russian's party.
Beneath the terrible ferocity of the beasts the men were soon
scampering in all directions--those who still lived to scamper,
for the great fangs of the apes of Akut and the tearing talons of
Sheeta already had found more than a single victim.
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