had locked him. She had not intended that he should ever leave
Opar, for she had looked upon his giant frame and handsome face with
the eyes of a woman and not those of a priestess.

In her clever mind she had concocted a story of wonderful revelation
from the lips of the flaming god himself, in which she had been ordered
to receive this white stranger as a messenger from him to his people on
earth. That would satisfy the people of Opar, she knew. The man would
be satisfied, she felt quite sure, to remain and be her husband rather
than to return to the sacrificial altar.

But when she had gone to explain her plan to him he had disappeared,
though the door had been tightly locked as she had left it. And now he
had returned--materialized from thin air--and was killing her priests
as though they had been sheep. For the moment she forgot her victim,
and before she could gather her wits together again the huge white man
was standing before her, the woman who had lain upon the altar in his
arms.

"One side, La," he cried. "You saved me once, and so I would not harm
you; but do not interfere or attempt to follow, or I shall have to kill
you also."

As he spoke he stepped past her toward the entrance to the subterranean
vaults.

"Who is she?" asked the high priestess, pointing at the unconscious
woman.

"She is mine," said Tarzan of the Apes.

For a moment the girl of Opar stood wide-eyed and staring. Then a look
of hopeless misery suffused her eyes--tears welled into them, and with
a little cry she sank to the cold floor, just as a swarm of frightful
men dashed past her to leap upon the ape-man.

But Tarzan of the Apes was not there when they reached out to seize
him. With a light bound he had disappeared into the passage leading to
the pits below, and when his pursuers came more cautiously after they
found the chamber empty, they but laughed and jabbered to one another,
for they knew that there was no exit from the pits other than the one
through which he had entered. If he came out at all he must come this
way, and they would wait and watch for him above.

And so Tarzan of the Apes, carrying the unconscious Jane Porter, came
through the pits of Opar beneath the temple of The Flaming God without
pursuit. But when the men of Opar had talked further about the matter,
they recalled to mind that this very man had escaped once before into
the pits, and, though they had watched the entrance he had not come
fo