the length of the floor, were piled many
tiers of metal ingots of an odd though uniform shape. To his groping
hands they felt not unlike double-headed bootjacks. The ingots were
quite heavy, and but for the enormous number of them he would have been
positive that they were gold; but the thought of the fabulous wealth
these thousands of pounds of metal would have represented were they in
reality gold, almost convinced him that they must be of some baser
metal.

At the far end of the chamber he discovered another barred door, and
again the bars upon the inside renewed the hope that he was traversing
an ancient and forgotten passageway to liberty. Beyond the door the
passage ran straight as a war spear, and it soon became evident to the
ape-man that it had already led him beyond the outer walls of the
temple. If he but knew the direction it was leading him! If toward
the west, then he must also be beyond the city's outer walls.

With increasing hopes he forged ahead as rapidly as he dared, until at
the end of half an hour he came to another flight of steps leading
upward. At the bottom this flight was of concrete, but as he ascended
his naked feet felt a sudden change in the substance they were
treading. The steps of concrete had given place to steps of granite.
Feeling with his hands, the ape-man discovered that these latter were
evidently hewed from rock, for there was no crack to indicate a joint.

For a hundred feet the steps wound spirally up, until at a sudden
turning Tarzan came into a narrow cleft between two rocky walls. Above
him shone the starry sky, and before him a steep incline replaced the
steps that had terminated at its foot. Up this pathway Tarzan
hastened, and at its upper end came out upon the rough top of a huge
granite bowlder.

A mile away lay the ruined city of Opar, its domes and turrets bathed
in the soft light of the equatorial moon. Tarzan dropped his eyes to
the ingot he had brought away with him. For a moment he examined it by
the moon's bright rays, then he raised his head to look out upon the
ancient piles of crumbling grandeur in the distance.

"Opar," he mused, "Opar, the enchanted city of a dead and forgotten
past. The city of the beauties and the beasts. City of horrors and
death; but--city of fabulous riches." The ingot was of virgin gold.

The bowlder on which Tarzan found himself lay well out in the plain
between the city and the distant cliffs he and his black warr