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With a bound he crossed the room and attempted to open it; but to no avail. No
longer did he seek silence, for he knew now that the thing had gone beyond the
sphere of chance. He threw his weight against the wooden panel; but the thick
skeel of which it was constructed would have withstood a battering ram. From
beyond came a low laugh.
Rapidly Turan examined each of the other doors. They were all locked. A glance
about the chamber revealed a wooden table and a bench. Set in the walls were
several heavy rings to which rusty chains were attached--all too significant of the
purpose to which the room was dedicated. In the dirt floor near the wall were two
or three holes resembling the mouths of burrows--doubtless the habitat of the
giant Martian rat. He had observed this much when suddenly the dim light was
extinguished, leaving him in darkness utter and complete. Turan, groping about,
sought the table and the bench. Placing the latter against the wall he drew the
table in front of him and sat down upon the bench, his long-sword gripped in
readiness before him. At least they should fight before they took him.
For some time he sat there waiting for he knew not what. No sound penetrated to
his subterranean dungeon. He slowly revolved in his mind the incidents of the
evening--the open, unguarded gate; the lighted doorway--the only one he had
seen thus open and lighted along the avenue he had followed; the advance of the
warriors at precisely the moment that he could find no other avenue of escape or
concealment; the corridors and chambers that led past many locked doors to this
underground prison leaving no other path for him to pursue.
"By my first ancestor!" he swore; "but it was simple and I a simpleton. They
tricked me neatly and have taken me without exposing themselves to a scratch;
but for what purpose?"
He wished that he might answer that question and then his thoughts turned to
the girl waiting there on the hill beyond the city for him--and he would never
come. He knew the ways of the more savage peoples of Barsoom. No, he would
never come, now. He had disobeyed her. He smiled at the sweet recollection of
those words of command that had fallen from her dear lips. He had disobeyed her
and now he had lost the reward.
But what of her? What now would be her fate--starving before a hostile city with
only an inhuman kaldane for company? Another thought--a horrid thought--
obtruded itself upon him. She had told him of the hideous sights she had
witnessed in the burrows of the kaldanes and he knew that they ate human flesh.
Ghek was starving. Should he eat his rykor he would be helpless; but--there was
sustenance there for them both, for the rykor and the kaldane. Turan cursed
himself for a fool. Why had he left her? Far better to have remained and died with
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