David’s clenched hand shot out, and in his blow was not alone the cumulated force of all his years of training but also of the one great impulse he had ever had to kill.  In that instant he wanted to strike a man dead—­a red-visaged monster, a fiend; and his blow sent Brokaw’s huge body reeling backward, his head twisted as if his neck had been broken.  He had not time to see what happened after that blow.  He did not see Brokaw fall.  A piercing interruption—­a scream that startled every drop of blood in his body—­turned him toward the cage.  Ten paces from him, standing at the inner edge of that circle of astounded and petrified men, was the Girl!  At first he thought she was standing naked there—­naked under the staring eyes of the fiends about him.  Her white arms gleamed bare, her shoulders and breast were bare, her slim, satiny body was naked to the waist, about which she had drawn tightly—­as if in a wild panic of haste—­an old and ragged skirt!  It was the Indian woman’s skirt.  He caught the glitter of beads on it, and for a moment he stared with the others, unable to move or cry out her name.  And then a breath of wind flung back her hair and he saw her face the colour of marble.  She was like a piece of glistening statuary, without a quiver of life that his eyes could see, without a movement, without a breath.  Only her hair moved, stirred by the air, flooded by the sun, floating about her shoulders and down her bare back in a lucent cloud of red and gold fires—­and out of this she was staring at the cage, stunned into that lifeless and unbreathing posture of horror by what she saw.  David did not follow her eyes.  He heard the growl and roar and clashing jaws of the fighting beasts; they were down again; one of the 6-inch trees that formed the bars of the cage snapped like a walking stick as their great bodies lurched against it; the earth shook, the very air seemed to tremble with the terrific force of the struggle—­and only the Girl was looking at that struggle.  Every eye was on her now, and David sprang suddenly forth from the circle of men, calling her name.

Ten paces separated them; half that distance lay between the Girl and the cage.  With the swiftness of an arrow sprung from the bow she had leaped into life and crossed that space.  In a tenth part of a second David would have been at her side.  He was that tenth of a second too late.  A gleaming shaft, she had passed between the bars and a tumult of horrified voices rose above the roar of battle as the girl sprang at the beasts with her naked hands.

Her voice came to David in a scream.

“Tara—­Tara—­Tara——­”