Turan drew his short-sword and cautiously descended.At the bottom was a short corridor with a closed door at the end.He approached the single heavy panel and listened.No sound came to him from beyond the mysterious portal.Gently he tried the door, which swung easily toward him at his touch.Before him was a low-ceiled chamber with a dirt floor.Set in its walls were several other doors and all were closed.As Turan stepped cautiously within, the third warrior descended the spiral runway behind him.The panthan crossed the room quickly and tried a door.It was locked.He heard a muffled click behind him and turned about with ready sword.He was alone; but the door through which he had entered was closed--it was the click of its lock that he had heard.
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 her, ready always to protect her, than to have left her at the mercy of the hideous Bantoomian.
Now Turan detected a heavy odor in the air.It oppressed him with a feeling of drowsiness.He would have risen to fight off the creeping lethargy, but his legs seemed weak, so that he sank again to the bench.Presently his sword slipped from his fingers and he sprawled forward upon the table his head resting upon his arms.
