iberty had
been the stakes for which he cast. In many respects the conditions were
dissimilar. Before, in broad daylight, he had been able to approach the
gryf under normal conditions in its natural state, and the gryf itself
was one that he had seen subjected to the authority of man, or at least
of a manlike creature; but here he was confronted by an imprisoned
beast in the full swing of a furious charge and he had every reason to
suspect that this gryf might never have felt the restraining influence
of authority, confined as it was in this gloomy pit to serve likely but
the single purpose that Tarzan had already seen so graphically
portrayed in his own experience of the past few moments.

To elude the creature, then, upon the possibility of discovering some
loophole of escape from his predicament seemed to the ape-man the
wisest course to pursue. Too much was at stake to risk an encounter
that might be avoided--an encounter the outcome of which there was
every reason to apprehend would seal the fate of the mate that he had
just found, only to lose again so harrowingly. Yet high as his
disappointment and chagrin ran, hopeless as his present estate now
appeared, there tingled in the veins of the savage lord a warm glow of
thanksgiving and elation. She lived! After all these weary months of
hopelessness and fear he had found her. She lived!

To the opposite side of the chamber, silently as the wraith of a
disembodied soul, the swift jungle creature moved from the path of the
charging Titan that, guided solely in the semi-darkness by its keen
ears, bore down upon the spot toward which Tarzan's noisy entrance into
its lair had attracted it. Along the further wall the ape-man hurried.
Before him now appeared the black opening of the corridor from which
the beast had emerged into the larger chamber. Without hesitation
Tarzan plunged into it. Even here his eyes, long accustomed to darkness
that would have seemed total to you or to me, saw dimly the floor and
the walls within a radius of a few feet--enough at least to prevent him
plunging into any unguessed abyss, or dashing himself upon solid rock
at a sudden turning.

The corridor was both wide and lofty, which indeed it must be to
accommodate the colossal proportions of the creature whose habitat it
was, and so Tarzan encountered no difficulty in moving with reasonable
speed along its winding trail. He was aware as he proceeded that the
trend of the passage was downward