Once we thought we discerned a gilded minaret

gleaming in the sun amidst the waving tops of far-distant trees,

but we soon abandoned the idea in the belief that it was but an

hallucination born of our great desire to discover the haunts of

civilized men in this beautiful, yet forbidding, spot.

Below us upon the river's bank the great white apes were devouring

the last remnants of Tars Tarkas' former companions, while great

herds of plant men grazed in ever-widening circles about the sward

which they kept as close clipped as the smoothest of lawns.

Knowing that attack from the tree was now improbable, we determined

to explore the cave, which we had every reason to believe was but

a continuation of the path we had already traversed, leading the

gods alone knew where, but quite evidently away from this valley

of grim ferocity.

As we advanced we found a well-proportioned tunnel cut from the

solid cliff. Its walls rose some twenty feet above the floor,

which was about five feet in width. The roof was arched. We had

no means of making a light, and so groped our way slowly into the

ever-increasing darkness, Tars Tarkas keeping in touch with one

wall while I felt along the other, while, to prevent our wandering

into diverging branches and becoming separated or lost in some

intricate and labyrinthine maze, we clasped hands.

How far we traversed the tunnel in this manner I do not know,

but presently we came to an obstruction which blocked our further

progress. It seemed more like a partition than a sudden ending of

the cave, for it was constructed not of the material of the cliff,

but of something which felt like very hard wood.

Silently I groped over its surface with my hands, and presently

was rewarded by the feel of the button which as commonly denotes

a door on Mars as does a door knob on Earth.

Gently pressing it, I had the satisfaction of feeling the door slowly

give before me, and in another instant we were looking into a dimly

lighted apartment, which, so far as we could see, was unoccupied.

Without more ado I swung the door wide open and, followed by the

huge Thark, stepped into the chamber. As we stood for a moment in

silence gazing about the room a slight noise behind caused me to

turn quickly, when, to my astonishment, I saw the door close with

a sharp click as though by an unseen hand.

Instantly I sprang toward it to wrench it open again, for something

in the uncanny movement of the thing and the tense and almost

palpable silence of the chamber seemed to portend a lurking evil

lying hidden in this rock-bound chamber within the bowels of the

Golden Cliffs.

My fingers clawed futilely at the unyielding portal, while my eyes

sought in vain for a duplicate of the button which had given us

ingress.

And then, from unseen lips, a cruel and mocking peal of laughter

rang through the desolate place.

CHAPTER III

THE CHAMBER OF MYSTERY

For moments after that awful laugh had ceased reverberating through

the rocky room, Tars Tarkas and I stood in tense and expectant

silence. But no further sound broke the stillness, nor within the

range of our vision did aught move.

At length Tars Tarkas laughed softly, after the manner of his

strange kind when in the presence of the horrible or terrifying.

It is not an hysterical laugh, but rather the genuine expression

of the pleasure they derive from the things that move Earth men to

loathing or to tears.

Often and again have I seen them roll upon the ground in mad fits

of uncontrollable mirth when witnessing the death agonies of women

and little children beneath the torture of that hellish green

Martian fete--the Great Games.

I looked up at the Thark, a smile upon my own lips, for here in

truth was greater need for a smiling face than a trembling chin.

"What do you make of it all?" I asked. "Where in the deuce are

we?"

He looked at me in surprise.

"Where are we?" he repeated. "Do you tell me, John Carter, that

you know not where you be?"

"That I am upon Barsoom is all that I can guess, and but for you and

the great white apes I should not even guess that, for the sights

I have seen this day are as unlike the things of my beloved Barsoom

as I knew it ten long years ago as they are unlike the world of my

birth.

"No, Tars Tarkas, I know not where we be."

"Where have you been since you opened the mighty portals of

the atmosphere plant years ago, after the keeper had died and the

engines stopped and all Barsoom was dying, that had not already

died, of asphyxiation? Your body even was never found, though the

men of a whole world sought after it for years, though the Jeddak

of Helium and his granddaughter, your princess, offered such fabulous

rewards that even princes of royal blood joined in the search.

"There was but one conclusion to reach when all efforts to locate

you had failed, and that, that you had taken the long, last pilgrimage

down the mysterious River Iss, to await in the Valley Dor upon the

shores of the Lost Sea of Korus the beautiful Dejah Thoris, your

princess.

"Why you had gone none could guess, for your princess still lived--"

"Thank God," I interrupted him. "I did not dare to ask you, for

I feared I might have been too late to save her--she was very low

when I left her in the royal gardens of Tardos Mors that long-gone

night; so very low that I scarcely hoped even then to reach the

atmosphere plant ere her dear spirit had fled from me for ever.

And she lives yet?"

"She lives, John Carter."

"You have not told me where we are," I reminded him.

"We are where I expected to find you, John Carter--and another.

Many years ago you heard the story of the woman who taught me the

thing that green Martians are reared to hate, the woman who taught

me to love. You know the cruel tortures and the awful death her

love won for her at the hands of the beast, Tal Hajus.

"She, I thought, awaited me by the Lost Sea of Korus.

"You know that it was left for a man from another world, for

yourself, John Carter, to teach this cruel Thark what friendship

is; and you, I thought, also roamed the care-free Valley Dor.

"Thus were the two I most longed for at the end of the long pilgrimage

I must take some day, and so as the time had elapsed which Dejah

Thoris had hoped might bring you once more to her side, for she

has always tried to believe that you had but temporarily returned

to your own planet, I at last gave way to my great yearning and a

month since I started upon the journey, the end of which you have

this day witnessed. Do you understand now where you be, John

Carter?"

"And that was the River Iss, emptying into the Lost Sea of Korus

in the Valley Dor?" I asked.

"This is the valley of love and peace and rest to which every

Barsoomian since time immemorial has longed to pilgrimage at the

end of a life of hate and strife and bloodshed," he replied. "This,

John Carter, is Heaven."

His tone was cold and ironical; its bitterness but reflecting

the terrible disappointment he had suffered. Such a fearful

disillusionment, such a blasting of life-long hopes and aspirations,

such an uprooting of age-old tradition might have excused a vastly

greater demonstration on the part of the Thark.

I laid my hand upon his shoulder.

"I am sorry," I said, nor did there seem aught else to say.

"Think, John Carter, of the countless billions of Barsoomians who

have taken the voluntary pilgrimage down this cruel river since

the beginning of time, only to fall into the ferocious clutches of

the terrible creatures that to-day assailed us.

"There is an ancient legend that once a red man returned from the

banks of the Lost Sea of Korus, returned from the Valley Dor, back

through the mysterious River Iss, and the legend has it that he

narrated a fearful blasphemy of horrid brutes that inhabited a valley

of wondrous loveliness, brutes that pounced upon each Barsoomian

as he terminated his pilgrimage and devoured him upon the banks

of the Lost Sea where he had looked to find love and peace and

happiness; but the ancients killed the blasphemer, as tradition

has ordained that any shall be killed who return from the bosom of

the River of Mystery.

"But now we know that it was no blasphemy, that the legend is a

true one, and that the man told only of what he saw; but what does

it profit us, John Carter, since even should we escape, we also

would be treated as blasphemers? We are between the wild thoat of

certainty and the mad zitidar of fact--we can escape neither."

"As Earth men say, we are between the devil and the deep sea, Tars

Tarkas," I replied, nor could I help but smile at our dilemma.

"There is naught that we can do but take things as they come,

and at least have the satisfaction of knowing that whoever slays

us eventually will have far greater numbers of their own dead to

count than they will get in return. White ape or plant man, green

Barsoomian or red man, whosoever it shall be that takes the last

toll from us will know that it is costly in lives to wipe out John

Carter, Prince of the House of Tardos Mors, and Tars Tarkas, Jeddak

of Thark, at the same time."

I could not help but laugh at him grim humour, and he joined in with

me in one of those rare laughs of real enjoyment which was one of

the attributes of this fierce Tharkian chief which marked him from

the others of his kind.

"But about yourself, John Carter," he cried at last. "If you have

not been here all these years where indeed have you been, and how

is it that I find you here to-day?"

"I have been back to Earth," I replied. "For ten long Earth years I

have been praying and hoping for the day that would carry me once

more to this grim old planet of yours, for which, with all its

cruel and terrible customs, I feel a bond of sympathy and love even

greater than for the world that gave me birth.

"For ten years have I been enduring a living death of uncertainty

and doubt as to whether Dejah Thoris lived, and now that for the

first time in all these years my prayers have been answered and my

doubt relieved I find myself, through a cruel whim of fate, hurled

into the one tiny spot of all Barsoom from which there is apparently

no escape, and if there were, at a price which would put out for

ever the last flickering hope which I may cling to of seeing my

princess again in this life--and you have seen to-day with what

pitiful futility man yearns toward a material hereafter.

"Only a bare half-hour before I saw you battling with the plant

men I was standing in the moonlight upon the banks of a broad river

that taps the eastern shore of Earth's most blessed land. I have

answered you, my friend. Do you believe?"

"I believe," replied Tars Tarkas, "though I cannot understand."

As we talked I had been searching the interior of the chamber with

my eyes. It was, perhaps, two hundred feet in length and half as

broad, with what appeared to be a doorway in the centre of the wall

directly opposite that through which we had entered.

The apartment was hewn from the material of the cliff, showing

mostly dull gold in the dim light which a single minute radium

illuminator in the centre of the roof diffused throughout its great

dimensions. Here and there polished surfaces of ruby, emerald,

and diamond patched the golden walls and ceiling. The floor was of

another material, very hard, and worn by much use to the smoothness

of glass. Aside from the two doors I could discern no sign of other

aperture, and as one we knew to be locked against us I approached

the other.

As I extended my hand to search for the controlling button, that

cruel and mocking laugh rang out once more, so close to me this

time that I involuntarily shrank back, tightening my grip upon the

hilt of my great sword.

And then from the far corner of the great chamber a hollow voice

chanted: "There is no hope, there is no hope; the dead return not,

the dead return not; nor is there any resurrection. Hope not, for

there is no hope."

Though our eyes instantly turned toward the spot from which the

voice seemed to emanate, there was no one in sight, and I must

admit that cold shivers played along my spine and the short hairs

at the base of my head stiffened and rose up, as do those upon a

hound's neck when in the night his eyes see those uncanny things

which are hidden from the sight of man.

Quickly I walked toward the mournful voice, but it had ceased ere

I reached the further wall, and then from the other end of the

chamber came another voice, shrill and piercing:

"Fools! Fools!" it shrieked. "Thinkest thou to defeat the eternal

laws of life and death? Wouldst cheat the mysterious Issus,

Goddess of Death, of her just dues? Did not her mighty messenger,

the ancient Iss, bear you upon her leaden bosom at your own behest

to the Valley Dor?

"Thinkest thou, O fools, that Issus wilt give up her own? Thinkest

thou to escape from whence in all the countless ages but a single

soul has fled?

"Go back the way thou camest, to the merciful maws of the children

of the Tree of Life or the gleaming fangs of the great white

apes, for there lies speedy surcease from suffering; but insist in

your rash purpose to thread the mazes of the Golden Cliffs of the

Mountains of Otz, past the ramparts of the impregnable fortresses

of the Holy Therns, and upon your way Death in its most frightful

form will overtake you--a death so horrible that even the Holy

Therns themselves, who conceived both Life and Death, avert their

eyes from its fiendishness and close their ears against the hideous

shrieks of its victims.

"Go back, O fools, the way thou camest."

And then the awful laugh broke out from another part of the chamber.

"Most uncanny," I remarked, turning to Tars Tarkas.

"What shall we do?" he asked. "We cannot fight empty air; I would

almost sooner return and face foes into whose flesh I may feel

my blade bite and know that I am selling my carcass dearly before

I go down to that eternal oblivion which is evidently the fairest

and most desirable eternity that mortal man has the right to hope

for."

"If, as you say, we cannot fight empty air, Tars Tarkas," I replied,

"neither, on the other hand, can empty air fight us. I, who have

faced and conquered in my time thousands of sinewy warriors and

tempered blades, shall not be turned back by wind; nor no more

shall you, Thark."

"But unseen voices may emanate from unseen and unseeable creatures

who wield invisible blades," answered the green warrior.

"Rot, Tars Tarkas," I cried, "those voices come from beings as real

as you or as I. In their veins flows lifeblood that may be let as

easily as ours, and the fact that they remain invisible to us is the

best proof to my mind that they are mortal; nor overly courageous

mortals at that. Think you, Tars Tarkas, that John Carter will fly

at the first shriek of a cowardly foe who dare not come out into

the open and face a good blade?"

I had spoken in a loud voice that there might be no question that

our would-be terrorizers should hear me, for I was tiring of this

nerve-racking fiasco. It had occurred to me, too, that the whole

business was but a plan to frighten us back into the valley of

death from which we had escaped, that we might be quickly disposed

of by the savage creatures there.

For a long period there was silence, then of a sudden a soft,

stealthy sound behind me caused me to turn suddenly to behold a

great many-legged banth creeping sinuously upon me.

The banth is a fierce beast of prey that roams the low hills

surrounding the dead seas of ancient Mars.