Nearer and nearer it came, and now even the breathing of the beast
was audible. Evidently attracted by the noise of his descent into
its cavernous retreat it was approaching to investigate. He could
not see it but he knew that it was not far distant, and then,
deafeningly there reverberated through those gloomy corridors the
mad bellow of the gryf.
Aware of the poor eyesight of the beast, and his own eyes now grown
accustomed to the darkness of the cavern, the ape-man sought to
elude the infuriated charge which he well knew no living creature
could withstand. Neither did he dare risk the chance of experimenting
upon this strange gryf with the tactics of the Tor-o-don that he
had found so efficacious upon that other occasion when his life
and liberty had been the stakes for which he cast. In many respects
the conditions were dissimilar. Before, in broad daylight, he
had been able to approach the gryf under normal conditions in its
natural state, and the gryf itself was one that he had seen subjected
to the authority of man, or at least of a manlike creature; but
here he was confronted by an imprisoned beast in the full swing
of a furious charge and he had every reason to suspect that this
gryf might never have felt the restraining influence of authority,
confined as it was in this gloomy pit to serve likely but the single
purpose that Tarzan had already seen so graphically portrayed in
his own experience of the past few moments.
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