At length, however, we reached the shadows of the forest, while
right behind us sprang the swiftest of our pursuers--a giant plant
man with claws outreaching to fasten his bloodsucking mouths upon
us.
He was, I should say, a hundred yards in advance of his closest
companion, and so I called to Tars Tarkas to ascend a great tree
that brushed the cliff's face while I dispatched the fellow, thus
giving the less agile Thark an opportunity to reach the higher
branches before the entire horde should be upon us and every vestige
of escape cut off.
But I had reckoned without a just appreciation either of the cunning
of my immediate antagonist or the swiftness with which his fellows
were covering the distance which had separated them from me.
As I raised my long-sword to deal the creature its death thrust it
halted in its charge and, as my sword cut harmlessly through the
empty air, the great tail of the thing swept with the power of a
grizzly's arm across the sward and carried me bodily from my feet
to the ground. In an instant the brute was upon me, but ere it
could fasten its hideous mouths into my breast and throat I grasped
a writhing tentacle in either hand.
The plant man was well muscled, heavy, and powerful but my earthly
sinews and greater agility, in conjunction with the deathly strangle
hold I had upon him, would have given me, I think, an eventual
victory had we had time to discuss the merits of our relative prowess
uninterrupted.
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