Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ptoached each other the wood-man began drumming his chest and the tuft on its peaked bony head twitched up and down with the beginning of its anger. The huge Englishman moved up toward the thing in the crouch of a wrestler. From each side of the savanna the gorillas and the black men watched their champions in the white blaze of light. For a few moments the governor's agent was aware of this strange double audience, then they faded out in his concentration on his fantastic antagonist. The thing's enormous arms daunted the Englishman. He thrust out his head at th monster and made a feint with his ridiculously short arms. 1 The next instant came the swish of a paw. The man squatted and leape in under the blow. Something like the limb of a tree with a hand on it struck Mogglesby. It numbed and slewed him around, but the man plunged in along the arm and began pounding away at the pot belly of the simian. The thing went down at once and at the same moment something caught and tore at the Englishman’s thigh. The man realized with sudden horror that the thing had terrific fighting hands for feet. It was like an onslaug out of the earth. | The man tried to kick these horrible lower hands. He fell on the gorill. and succeeded in catching a foot in the hook of his knee. He felt his whole body shaken by the creature’s effort to free his foot. At the same time thé enormous arms wrapped around him, drawing him toward the fangeq muzzle. The man jammed his head hard against the simian’s huge chest: He worked his short arms terrifically against the hairy belly. Blows like a pile driver fell on the white man’s back and head. The thing's loose foot was ripping his thigh and trying to push up between their two bodies and disembowel him. He tried to lie flatter on the furious gorilla. He reached his hand upward along the chest and neck; he ran his fingers around the frothing muzzle of the ogre and with all his strength thrust his thumb into the cavernous eyes. ry a sudden the wood-man roared, began a frantic shaking and shoving away of the powerful white man. Mogglesby clung desperately against the enormous thrust. He dug his thumb into the eye. He felt the ball roll deep in its socket; he felt it tear and the humour spurt out on his fingers. The monster wrung loose his foot and tore at Mogglesby’s loins, then flung the man off in a roaring agony. The Englishman felt himself fly through the air and strike the ground. He rose groggily to his feet. The cloth of his trousers seemed ground into the red mass of his legs. The savanna seemed to sway round and round. He stagpered toward the gorilla, which squatted, roaring and rubbing its enormous forearms over its eyes. At the moment the man felt with. the anthropoid a furious equality of being. They were two equal branches of life struggling for the mastery of the savanna. | Moggtesby weaved toward the blinded simian, He got behind it, caught it around its bulk and made a last terrific heave. The animal gave a bari- 76 comicbooks.com