persecution that the beasts
appeared only when our backs were turned; we never saw one really
materialize from thin air, nor did I for an instant sufficiently lose
my excellent reasoning faculties to be once deluded into the belief
that the beasts came into the room other than through some concealed
and well-contrived doorway.

Among the ornaments of Tars Tarkas' leather harness, which is the only
manner of clothing worn by Martians other than silk capes and robes of
silk and fur for protection from the cold after dark, was a small
mirror, about the bigness of a lady's hand glass, which hung midway
between his shoulders and his waist against his broad back.

Once as he stood looking down at a newly fallen antagonist my eyes
happened to fall upon this mirror and in its shiny surface I saw
pictured a sight that caused me to whisper:

"Move not, Tars Tarkas! Move not a muscle!"

He did not ask why, but stood like a graven image while my eyes watched
the strange thing that meant so much to us.

What I saw was the quick movement of a section of the wall behind me.
It was turning upon pivots, and with it a section of the floor directly
in front of it was turning. It was as though you placed a
visiting-card upon end on a silver dollar that you had laid flat upon a
table, so that the edge of the card perfectly bisected the surface of
the coin.

The card might represent the section of the wall that turned and the
silver dollar the section of the floor. Both were so nicely fitted
into the adjacent portions of the floor and wall that no crack had been
noticeable in the dim light of the chamber.

As the turn was half completed a great beast was revealed sitting upon
its haunches upon that part of the revolving floor that had been on the
opposite side before the wall commenced to move; when the section
stopped, the beast was facing toward me on our side of the
partition--it was very simple.

But what had interested me most was the sight that the half-turned
section had presented through the opening that it had made. A great
chamber, well lighted, in which were several men and women chained to
the wall, and in front of them, evidently directing and operating the
movement of the secret doorway, a wicked-faced man, neither red as are
the red men of Mars, nor green as are the green men, but white, like
myself, with a great mass of flowing yellow hair.

The prisoners behind him were red Martians. Chained with them were a