place adjoins them. Baths are connected with the sleeping chambers,
and each guest is required to bathe daily or depart from the hotel.

Usually on a second or third floor there is a large sleeping-room
for single women guests, but its appointments do not vary materially
from the chamber occupied by men. The guards who watch the women
remain in the corridor outside the sleeping chamber, while female
slaves pace back and forth among the sleepers within, ready to
notify the warriors should their presence be required.

I was surprised to note that all the guards with the hotel at which
we stopped were red men, and on inquiring of one of them I learned
that they were slaves purchased by the proprietors of the hotels from
the government. The man whose post was past my sleeping platform
had been commander of the navy of a great Martian nation; but fate
had carried his flagship across the ice-barrier within the radius
of power of the magnetic shaft, and now for many tedious years he
had been a slave of the yellow men.

He told me that princes, jeds, and even jeddaks of the outer
world, were among the menials who served the yellow race; but when
I asked him if he had heard of the fate of Mors Kajak or Tardos Mors
he shook his head, saying that he never had heard of their being
prisoners here, though he was very familiar with the reputations
and fame they bore in the outer world.

Neither had he heard any rumor of the coming of the Father of Therns
and the black dator of the First Born, but he hastened to explain
that he knew little of what took place within the palace. I could
see that he wondered not a little that a yellow man should be so
inquisitive about certain red prisoners from beyond the ice-barrier,
and that I should be so ignorant of customs and conditions among
my own race.

In fact, I had forgotten my disguise upon discovering a red man
pacing before my sleeping platform; but his growing expression of
surprise warned me in time, for I had no mind to reveal my identity
to any unless some good could come of it, and I did not see how
this poor fellow could serve me yet, though I had it in my mind
that later I might be the means of serving him and all the other
thousands of prisoners who do the bidding of their stern masters
in Kadabra.

Thuvan Dihn and I discussed our plans as we sat together among our
sleeping silks and furs that night in the midst of the hundreds
of yellow men who occupied the apartment