s
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.

"Ther