lowly I shrank back
from the awful horror of them. Back into my corner I crouched holding
my hands palms out, before me, and stealthily on came the awful eyes
until they reached the dead body at my feet. Then slowly they
retreated but this time with a strange grating sound and finally they
disappeared in some black and distant recess of my dungeon.

CHAPTER XIX

BATTLING IN THE ARENA

Slowly I regained my composure and finally essayed again to attempt to
remove the keys from the dead body of my former jailer. But as I
reached out into the darkness to locate it I found to my horror that it
was gone. Then the truth flashed on me; the owners of those gleaming
eyes had dragged my prize away from me to be devoured in their
neighboring lair; as they had been waiting for days, for weeks, for
months, through all this awful eternity of my imprisonment to drag my
dead carcass to their feast.

For two days no food was brought me, but then a new messenger appeared
and my incarceration went on as before, but not again did I allow my
reason to be submerged by the horror of my position.

Shortly after this episode another prisoner was brought in and chained
near me. By the dim torch light I saw that he was a red Martian and I
could scarcely await the departure of his guards to address him. As
their retreating footsteps died away in the distance, I called out
softly the Martian word of greeting, kaor.

"Who are you who speaks out of the darkness?" he answered

"John Carter, a friend of the red men of Helium."

"I am of Helium," he said, "but I do not recall your name."

And then I told him my story as I have written it here, omitting only
any reference to my love for Dejah Thoris. He was much excited by the
news of Helium's princess and seemed quite positive that she and Sola
could easily have reached a point of safety from where they left me.
He said that he knew the place well because the defile through which
the Warhoon warriors had passed when they discovered us was the only
one ever used by them when marching to the south.

"Dejah Thoris and Sola entered the hills not five miles from a great
waterway and are now probably quite safe," he assured me.

My fellow prisoner was Kantos Kan, a padwar (lieutenant) in the navy of
Helium. He had been a member of the ill-fated expedition which had
fallen into the hands of the Tharks at the time of Dejah Thoris'
capture, and he briefly related the events which foll