“The brute is seldom wrong,” I said, “and while I do not doubt your
superior knowledge, Thern, I think that I shall do well to listen to
the voice of instinct that is backed by love and loyalty.”
As I spoke I smiled grimly that he might know without words that I
distrusted him.
“As you will,” the fellow replied with a shrug. “In the end it shall be
all the same.”
I turned and followed Woola into the left-hand passage, and though my
back was toward my enemies, my ears were on the alert; yet I heard no
sound of pursuit. The passageway was dimly lighted by occasional radium
bulbs, the universal lighting medium of Barsoom.
These same lamps may have been doing continuous duty in these
subterranean chambers for ages, since they require no attention and are
so compounded that they give off but the minutest of their substance in
the generation of years of luminosity.
We had proceeded for but a short distance when we commenced to pass the
mouths of diverging corridors, but not once did Woola hesitate. It was
at the opening to one of these corridors upon my right that I presently
heard a sound that spoke more plainly to John Carter, fighting man,
than could the words of my mother tongue—it was the clank of metal—the
metal of a warrior’s harness—and it came from a little distance up the
corridor upon my right.
Woola heard it, too, and like a flash he had wheeled and stood facing
the threatened danger, his mane all abristle and all his rows of
glistening fangs bared by snarling, backdrawn lips. With a gesture I
silenced him, and together we drew aside into another corridor a few
paces farther on.
Here we waited; nor did we have long to wait, for presently we saw the
shadows of two men fall upon the floor of the main corridor athwart the
doorway of our hiding place. Very cautiously they were moving now—the
accidental clank that had alarmed me was not repeated.
Presently they came opposite our station; nor was I surprised to see
that the two were Lakor and his companion of the guardroom.
They walked very softly, and in the right hand of each gleamed a keen
long-sword. They halted quite close to the entrance of our retreat,
whispering to each other.
“Can it be that we have distanced them already?” said Lakor.
“Either that or the beast has led the man upon a wrong trail,” replied
the other, “for the way which we took is by far the shorter to this
point—for him who knows it. John Carter would have found it a short
road to death had he taken it as you suggested to him.”
“Yes,” said Lakor, “no amount of fighting ability would have saved him
from the pivoted flagstone. He surely would have stepped upon it, and
by now, if the pit beneath it has a bottom, which Thurid denies, he
should have been rapidly approaching it. Curses on that calot of his
that warned him toward the safer avenue!”
“There be other dangers ahead of him, though,” spoke Lakor’s fellow,
“which he may not so easily escape—should he succeed in escaping our
two good swords. Consider, for example, what chance he will have,
coming unexpectedly into the chamber of—”
I would have given much to have heard the balance of that conversation
that I might have been warned of the perils that lay ahead, but fate
intervened, and just at the very instant of all other instants that I
would not have elected to do it, I sneezed.