Mo-sar saw that neither trickery nor persuasion would avail now and every precious minute counted.He looked again at the beautiful woman who stood beside O-lo-a.He had never before seen her but he well knew from palace gossip that she could be no other than the godlike stranger whom Ko-tan had planned to make his queen.
"Bu-lot," he cried to his son, "take you your own woman and I
will take--mine!" and with that he sprang suddenly forward and seizing Jane about the waist lifted her in his arms, so that before O-lo-a or Pan-at-lee might even guess his purpose he had disappeared through the hangings near the foot of the dais and was gone with the stranger woman struggling and fighting in his grasp.
And then Bu-lot sought to seize O-lo-a, but O-lo-a had her Pan-at-lee--fierce little tiger-girl of the savage Kor-ul-ja--Pan-at-lee whose name belied her--and Bu-lot found that with the two of them his hands were full.When he would have lifted O-lo-a and borne her away Pan-at-lee seized him around the legs and strove to drag him down.Viciously he kicked her, but she would not desist, and finally, realizing that he might not only lose his princess but be so delayed as to invite capture if he did not rid himself of this clawing, scratching she-jato, he hurled O-lo-a to the floor and seizing Pan-at-lee by the hair drew his knife and--
The curtains behind him suddenly parted.In two swift bounds a lithe figure crossed the room and before ever the knife of Bu-lot reached its goal his wrist was seized from behind and a terrific blow crashing to the base of his brain dropped him, lifeless, to the floor.Bu-lot, coward, traitor, and assassin, died without knowing who struck him down.
As Tarzan of the Apes leaped into the pool in the gryf pit of the temple at A-lur one might have accounted for his act on the hypothesis that it was the last blind urge of self-preservation to delay, even for a moment, the inevitable tragedy in which each some day must play the leading role upon his little stage;
but no--those cool, gray eyes had caught the sole possibility for escape that the surroundings and the circumstances offered--a tiny, moonlit patch of water glimmering through a small aperture in the cliff at the surface of the pool upon its farther side.
With swift, bold strokes he swam for speed alone knowing that the water would in no way deter his pursuer.Nor did it.Tarzan heard the great splash as the huge creature plunged into the pool behind him; he heard the churning waters as it forged rapidly onward in his wake.He was nearing the opening--would it be large enough to permit the passage of his body? That portion of it which showed above the surface of the water most certainly would not.His life, then, depended upon how much of the aperture was submerged.And now it was directly before him and the gryf directly behind.There was no alternative--there was no other hope.The ape-man threw all the resources of his great strength into the last few strokes, extended his hands before him as a cutwater, submerged to the water's level and shot forward toward the hole.