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. As the threatening bull continued his stiff and jerky circling of the ape-man, much after the manner that you have noted among dogs when a strange canine comes among them, it occurred to Tarzan to discover if the language of his own tribe was identical with that of this other family, and so he addressed the brute in the language of the tribe of Kerchak. “Who are you,” he asked, “who threatens Tarzan of the Apes?” The hairy brute looked his surprise. “I am Akut,” replied the other in the same simple, primal tongue which is so low in the scale of spoken languages that, as Tarzan had surmised, it was identical with that of the tribe in which the first twenty years of his life had been spent. “I am Akut,” said the ape. “Molak is dead. I am king. Go away or I shall kill you!” “You saw how easily I killed Molak,” replied Tarzan. “So I could kill you if I cared to be king. But Tarzan of the Apes would not be king of the tribe of Akut. All he wishes is to live in peace in this country. Let us be friends. Tarzan of the Apes can help you, and you can help Tarzan of the Apes.” “You cannot kill Akut,” replied the other. “None is so great as Akut. Had you not killed Molak, Akut would have done so, for Akut was ready to be king.” For answer the ape-man hurled himself upon the great brute who during the conversation had slightly relaxed his vigilance. In the twinkling of an eye the man had seized the wrist of the great ape, and before the other could grapple with him had whirled him about and leaped upon his broad back. Down they went together, but so well had Tarzan’s plan worked out that before ever they touched the ground he had gained the same hold upon Akut that had broken Molak’s neck. Slowly he brought the pressure to bear, and then as in days gone by he had given Kerchak the chance to surrender and live, so now he gave to Akut—in whom he saw a possible ally of great strength and resource—the option of living in amity with him or dying as he had just seen his savage and heretofore invincible king die. “Ka-Goda?” whispered Tarzan to the ape beneath him.