h of time to ascend some fifty feet
above the bottom when a noise above attracted my attention. To my
chagrin I saw that the covering of the pit was being removed far
above me, and in the light of the courtyard beyond I saw a number
of yellow warriors.

Could it be that I was laboriously working my way into some new
trap? Were the messages spurious, after all? And then, just as
my hope and courage had ebbed to their lowest, I saw two things.

One was the body of a huge, struggling, snarling apt being lowered
over the side of the pit toward me, and the other was an aperture
in the side of the shaft--an aperture larger than a man's body,
into which my rope led.

Just as I scrambled into the dark hole before me the apt passed
me, reaching out with his mighty hands to clutch me, and snapping,
growling, and roaring in a most frightful manner.

Plainly now I saw the end for which Salensus Oll had destined me.
After first torturing me with starvation he had caused this fierce
beast to be lowered into my prison to finish the work that the
jeddak's hellish imagination had conceived.

And then another truth flashed upon me--I had lived nine days of
the allotted ten which must intervene before Salensus Oll could
make Dejah Thoris his queen. The purpose of the apt was to insure
my death before the tenth day.

I almost laughed aloud as I thought how Salensus Oll's measure of
safety was to aid in defeating the very end he sought, for when
they discovered that the apt was alone in the Pit of Plenty they
could not know but that he had completely devoured me, and so no
suspicion of my escape would cause a search to be made for me.

Coiling the rope that had carried me thus far upon my strange
journey, I sought for the other end, but found that as I followed
it forward it extended always before me. So this was the meaning
of the words: "Follow the rope."

The tunnel through which I crawled was low and dark. I had followed
it for several hundred yards when I felt a knot beneath my fingers.
"Beyond the knots lies danger."

Now I went with the utmost caution, and a moment later a sharp turn
in the tunnel brought me to an opening into a large, brilliantly
lighted chamber.

The trend of the tunnel I had been traversing had been slightly
upward, and from this I judged that the chamber into which I now
found myself looking must be either on the first floor of the palace
or directly beneath the first floor.

Upon the oppos