a miracle had saved him, but when he realized the ease with which
the girl had, single-handed, beaten off twenty gorilla-like males,
and an instant later, as he saw them again take up their dance
about him while she addressed them in a singsong monotone, which
bore every evidence of rote, he came to the conclusion that it was
all but a part of the ceremony of which he was the central figure.

After a moment or two the girl drew a knife from her girdle, and,
leaning over Tarzan, cut the bonds from his legs. Then, as the men
stopped their dance, and approached, she motioned to him to rise.
Placing the rope that had been about his legs around his neck, she
led him across the courtyard, the men following in twos.

Through winding corridors she led, farther and farther into the
remoter precincts of the temple, until they came to a great chamber
in the center of which stood an altar. Then it was that Tarzan
translated the strange ceremony that had preceded his introduction
into this holy of holies.

He had fallen into the hands of descendants of the ancient sun
worshippers. His seeming rescue by a votaress of the high priestess
of the sun had been but a part of the mimicry of their heathen
ceremony--the sun looking down upon him through the opening at the
top of the court had claimed him as his own, and the priestess had
come from the inner temple to save him from the polluting hands of
worldlings--to save him as a human offering to their flaming deity.

And had he needed further assurance as to the correctness of his
theory he had only to cast his eyes upon the brownish-red stains
that caked the stone altar and covered the floor in its immediate