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."