es and minarets of the great
temple that surrounds it. Beneath it, in the ground, there lies the
main body of the temple consisting in six hundred and eighty-seven
circular chambers, one below another. To each chamber a single
corridor leads through solid rock from the pits of Issus.

"As the entire Temple of the Sun revolves once with each revolution of
Barsoom about the sun, but once each year does the entrance to each
separate chamber come opposite the mouth of the corridor which forms
its only link to the world without.

"Here Issus puts those who displease her, but whom she does not care to
execute forthwith. Or to punish a noble of the First Born she may
cause him to be placed within a chamber of the Temple of the Sun for a
year. Ofttimes she imprisons an executioner with the condemned, that
death may come in a certain horrible form upon a given day, or again
but enough food is deposited in the chamber to sustain life but the
number of days that Issus has allotted for mental anguish.

"Thus will Dejah Thoris die, and her fate will be sealed by the first
alien foot that crosses the threshold of Issus."

So I was to be thwarted in the end, although I had performed the
miraculous and come within a few short moments of my divine Princess,
yet was I as far from her as when I stood upon the banks of the Hudson
forty-eight million miles away.

CHAPTER XXI

THROUGH FLOOD AND FLAME

Yersted's information convinced me that there was no time to be lost.
I must reach the Temple of Issus secretly before the forces under Tars
Tarkas assaulted at dawn. Once within its hated walls I was positive
that I could overcome the guards of Issus and bear away my Princess,
for at my back I would have a force ample for the occasion.

No sooner had Carthoris and the others joined me than we commenced the
transportation of our men through the submerged passage to the mouth of
the gangways which lead from the submarine pool at the temple end of
the watery tunnel to the pits of Issus.

Many trips were required, but at last all stood safely together again
at the beginning of the end of our quest. Five thousand strong we
were, all seasoned fighting-men of the most warlike race of the red men
of Barsoom.

As Carthoris alone knew the hidden ways of the tunnels we could not
divide the party and attack the temple at several points at once as
would have been most desirable, and so it was decided that he lead us
all as quickl