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floor with arms outstretched and fingers stiffly outspread. One of his feet was
doubled partially beneath him, while the other was still entangled in the sleeping
silks and furs upon the dais. After five thousand years the expression of the
withered face and the eyeless sockets retained the aspect of horrid fear to such
an extent, that Gahan knew that he was looking upon the body of O-Mai the
Cruel.
Suddenly Tara, who stood close beside him, clutched his arm and pointed toward
a far corner of the room. Gahan looked and looking felt the hairs upon his neck
rising. He threw his left arm about the girl and with bared sword stood between
her and the hangings that they watched, and then slowly Gahan of Gathol backed
away, for in this grim and somber chamber, which no human foot had trod for
five thousand years and to which no breath of wind might enter, the heavy
hangings in the far corner had moved. Not gently had they moved as a draught
might have moved them had there been a draught, but suddenly they had bulged
out as though pushed against from behind. To the opposite corner backed Gahan
until they stood with their backs against the hangings there, and then hearing
the approach of their pursuers across the chamber beyond Gahan pushed Tara
through the hangings and, following her, kept open with his left hand, which he
had disengaged from the girl's grasp, a tiny opening through which he could view
the apartment and the doorway upon the opposite side through which the
pursuers would enter, if they came this far.
Behind the hangings there was a space of about three feet in width between them
and the wall, making a passageway entirely around the room, broken only by the
single entrance opposite them; this being a common arrangement especially in
the sleeping apartments of the rich and powerful upon Barsoom. The purposes of
this arrangement were several. The passageway afforded a station for guards in
the same room with their master without intruding entirely upon his privacy; it
concealed secret exits from the chamber; it permitted the occupant of the room to
hide eavesdroppers and assassins for use against enemies that he might lure to
his chamber.
The three chiefs with a dozen warriors had had no difficulty in following the
tracks of the fugitives through the dust of the corridors and chambers they had
traversed. To enter this portion of the palace at all had required all the courage
they possessed, and now that they were within the very chambers of O-Mai their
nerves were pitched to the highest key--another turn and they would snap; for
the people of Manator are filled with weird superstitions. As they entered the
outer chamber they moved slowly, with drawn swords, no one seeming anxious to
take the lead, and the twelve warriors hanging back in unconcealed and
shameless terror, while the three chiefs, spurred on by fear of O-Tar and by pride,
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