It was quite dark before La, the high priestess, returned tothe Chamber of the Dead with food and drink for Tarzan.She bore no light, feeling with her hands along thecrumbling walls until she gained the chamber. Through thestone grating above, a tropic moon served dimly to illuminatethe interior.

Tarzan, crouching in the shadows at the far side of theroom as the first sound of approaching footsteps reached him,came forth to meet the girl as he recognized that it was she.

"They are furious," were her first words. "Never beforehas a human sacrifice escaped the altar. Already fifty havegone forth to track you down. They have searched thetemple--all save this single room."

"Why do they fear to come here?" he asked.

"It is the Chamber of the Dead. Here the dead return to worship.See this ancient altar? It is here that the dead sacrifice theliving--if they find a victim here. That is the reasonour people shun this chamber. Were one to enter he knowsthat the waiting dead would seize him for their sacrifice."

"But you?" he asked.

"I am high priestess--I alone am safe from the dead.It is I who at rare intervals bring them a human sacrificefrom the world above. I alone may enter here in safety."

"Why have they not seized me?" he asked, humoring hergrotesque belief.

She looked at him quizzically for a moment. Then she replied:

"It is the duty of a high priestess to instruct, to interpret--according to the creed that others, wiser than herself, havelaid down; but there is nothing in the creed which says thatshe must believe. The more one knows of one's religion theless one believes--no one living knows more of mine than I."

"Then your only fear in aiding me to escape is that yourfellow mortals may discover your duplicity?"

"That is all--the dead are dead; they cannot harm--or help.We must therefore depend entirely upon ourselves, and thesooner we act the better it will be. I had difficulty ineluding their vigilance but now in bringing you this morselof food. To attempt to repeat the thing daily would be theheight of folly. Come, let us see how far we may go towardliberty before I must return."

She led him back to the chamber beneath the altar room.Here she turned into one of the several corridors leadingfrom it. In the darkness Tarzan could not see which one.For ten minutes they groped slowly along a winding passage,until at length they came to a closed door. Here he heardher fumbling with a key, and presently came the sound of ametal bolt grating against metal. The door swung in onscraping hinges, and they entered.

"You will be safe here until tomorrow night," she said.

Then she went out, and, closing the door, locked it behind her.

Where Tarzan stood it was dark as Erebus. Not even histrained eyes could penetrate the utter blackness.Cautiously he moved forward until his out-stretched handtouched a wall, then very slowly he traveled around thefour walls of the chamber.

Apparently it was about twenty feet square. The floorwas of concrete, the walls of the dry masonry that markedthe method of construction above ground. Small pieces ofgranite of various sizes were ingeniously laid togetherwithout mortar to construct these ancient foundations.

The first time around the walls Tarzan thought he detecteda strange phenomenon for a room with no windows but asingle door. Again he crept carefully around close tothe wall. No, he could not be mistaken! He paused beforethe center of the wall opposite the door. For a moment hestood quite motionless, then he moved a few feet to one side.Again he returned, only to move a few feet to the other side.

Once more he made the entire circuit of the room, feelingcarefully every foot of the walls. Finally he stopped againbefore the particular section that had aroused his curiosity.There was no doubt of it! A distinct draft of fresh air wasblowing into the chamber through the intersection of themasonry at that particular point--and nowhere else.

Tarzan tested several pieces of the granite which made upthe wall at this spot, and finally was rewarded by findingone which lifted out readily. It was about ten inches wide,with a face some three by six inches showing within the chamber.One by one the ape-man lifted out similarly shaped stones.The wall at this point was constructed entirely, it seemed,of these almost perfect slabs. In a short time he hadremoved some dozen, when he reached in to test the nextlayer of masonry. To his surprise, he felt nothing behind themasonry he had removed as far as his long arm could reach.

It was a matter of but a few minutes to remove enoughof the wall to permit his body to pass through the aperture.Directly ahead of him he thought he discerned a faint glow--scarcely more than a less impenetrable darkness.Cautiously he moved forward on hands and knees, until at aboutfifteen feet, or the average thickness of the foundationwalls, the floor ended abruptly in a sudden drop. As far outas he could reach he felt nothing, nor could he find thebottom of the black abyss that yawned before him, though,clinging to the edge of the floor, he lowered his body intothe darkness to its full length.Finally it occurred to him to look up, and there above himhe saw through a round opening a tiny circular patch ofstarry sky. Feeling up along the sides of the shaft as faras he could reach, the ape-man discovered that so much ofthe wall as he could feel converged toward the center ofthe shaft as it rose. This fact precluded possibility ofescape in that direction.

As he sat speculating on the nature and uses of thisstrange passage and its terminal shaft, the moon toppedthe opening above, letting a flood of soft, silvery light intothe shadowy place. Instantly the nature of the shaft becameapparent to Tarzan, for far below him he saw the shimmeringsurface of water. He had come upon an ancient well--butwhat was the purpose of the connection between the welland the dungeon in which he had been hidden?

As the moon crossed the opening of the shaft its lightflooded the whole interior, and then Tarzan saw directlyacross from him another opening in the opposite wall.He wondered if this might not be the mouth of a passageleading to possible escape. It would be worth investigating,at least, and this he determined to do.

Quickly returning to the wall he had demolished toexplore what lay beyond it, he carried the stones into thepassageway and replaced them from that side. The deep depositof dust which he had noticed upon the blocks as hehad first removed them from the wall had convinced himthat even if the present occupants of the ancient pile hadknowledge of this hidden passage they had made no use ofit for perhaps generations.

The wall replaced, Tarzan turned to the shaft, which wassome fifteen feet wide at this point. To leap across theintervening space was a small matter to the ape-man, and amoment later he was proceeding along a narrow tunnel,moving cautiously for fear of being precipitated into anothershaft such as he had just crossed.

He had advanced some hundred feet when he came to aflight of steps leading downward into Stygian gloom.Some twenty feet below, the level floor of the tunnelrecommenced, and shortly afterward his progress was stoppedby a heavy wooden door which was secured by massive woodenbars upon the side of Tarzan's approach. This fact suggestedto the ape-man that he might surely be in a passagewayleading to the outer world, for the bolts, barring progressfrom the opposite side, tended to substantiate this hypothesis,unless it were merely a prison to which it led.

Along the tops of the bars were deep layers of dust--a furtherindication that the passage had lain long unused. As hepushed the massive obstacle aside, its great hinges shriekedout in weird protest against this unaccustomed disturbance.For a moment Tarzan paused to listen for any responsivenote which might indicate that the unusual nightnoise had alarmed the inmates of the temple; but as he heardnothing he advanced beyond the doorway.

Carefully feeling about, he found himself within a largechamber, along the walls of which, and down the length ofthe floor, were piled many tiers of metal ingots of an oddthough uniform shape. To his groping hands they felt notunlike double-headed bootjacks. The ingots were quiteheavy, and but for the enormous number of them he wouldhave been positive that they were gold; but the thought ofthe fabulous wealth these thousands of pounds of metalwould have represented were they in reality gold, almostconvinced him that they must be of some baser metal.

At the far end of the chamber he discovered anotherbarred door, and again the bars upon the inside renewedthe hope that he was traversing an ancient and forgottenpassageway to liberty. Beyond the door the passage ranstraight as a war spear, and it soon became evident tothe ape-man that it had already led him beyond the outerwalls of the temple. If he but knew the direction it wasleading him! If toward the west, then he must also bebeyond the city's outer walls.

With increasing hopes he forged ahead as rapidly as hedared, until at the end of half an hour he came to anotherflight of steps leading upward. At the bottom thisflight was of concrete, but as he ascended his naked feetfelt 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 theselatter were evidently hewed from rock, for there was nocrack to indicate a joint.

For a hundred feet the steps wound spirally up, until at asudden turning Tarzan came into a narrow cleft betweentwo rocky walls. Above him shone the starry sky, and beforehim a steep incline replaced the steps that had terminatedat its foot. Up this pathway Tarzan hastened, and atits upper end came out upon the rough top of a hugegranite bowlder.

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

"Opar," he mused, "Opar, the enchanted city of a deadand 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 outin the plain between the city and the distant cliffs he and hisblack warriors had scaled the morning previous. To descendits rough and precipitous face was a task of infinite laborand considerable peril even to the ape-man; but at last hefelt the soft soil of the valley beneath his feet, and withouta backward glance at Opar he turned his face toward theguardian cliffs, and at a rapid trot set off across the valley.

The sun was just rising as he gained the summit of theflat mountain at the valley's western boundary. Far beneathhim he saw smoke arising above the tree-tops of the forestat the base of the foothills.

"Man," he murmured. "And there were fifty who wentforth to track me down. Can it be they?"

Swiftly he descended the face of the cliff, and, droppinginto a narrow ravine which led down to the far forest, hehastened onward in the direction of the smoke. Striking theforest's edge about a quarter of a mile from the point atwhich the slender column arose into the still air, he took tothe trees. Cautiously he approached until there suddenlyburst upon his view a rude BOMA, in the center of which,squatted about their tiny fires, sat his fifty black Waziri.He called to them in their own tongue:

"Arise, my children, and greet thy king!"

With exclamations of surprise and fear the warriors leapedto their feet, scarcely knowing whether to flee or not.Then Tarzan dropped lightly from an overhanging branch intotheir midst. When they realized that it was indeed theirchief in the flesh, and no materialized spirit, they went madwith joy.

"We were cowards, oh, Waziri," cried Busuli. "We ranaway and left you to your fate; but when our panic wasover we swore to return and save you, or at least takerevenge upon your murderers. We were but now preparing toscale the heights once more and cross the desolate valley tothe terrible city."

"Have you seen fifty frightful men pass down from thecliffs into this forest, my children?" asked Tarzan.

"Yes, Waziri," replied Busuli. "They passed us late yesterday,as we were about to turn back after you. They had no woodcraft.We heard them coming for a mile before we saw them, and as wehad other business in hand we withdrew into the forest and letthem pass. They were waddling rapidly along upon short legs,and now and then one would go upon all fours like Bolgani,the gorilla. They were indeed fifty frightful men, Waziri."

When Tarzan had related his adventures and told themof the yellow metal he had found, not one demurred whenhe outlined a plan to return by night and bring away whatthey could carry of the vast treasure; and so it was that asdusk fell across the desolate valley of Opar fifty ebonwarriors trailed at a smart trot over the dry and dustyground toward the giant bowlder that loomed before the city.

If it had seemed a difficult task to descend the face ofthe bowlder, Tarzan soon found that it would be next toimpossible to get his fifty warriors to the summit. Finally thefeat was accomplished by dint of herculean efforts upon thepart of the ape-man. Ten spears were fastened end to end,and with one end of this remarkable chain attached to hiswaist, Tarzan at last succeeded in reaching the summit.

Once there, he drew up one of his blacks, and in this waythe entire party was finally landed in safety upon thebowlder's top. Immediately Tarzan led them to thetreasure chamber, where to each was allotted a load oftwo ingots, for each about eighty pounds.

By midnight the entire party stood once more at thefoot of the bowlder, but with their heavy loads it was mid-forenoon ere they reached the summit of the cliffs.From there on the homeward journey was slow, as these proudfighting men were unaccustomed to the duties of porters.But they bore their burdens uncomplainingly, and at the endof thirty days entered their own country.

Here, instead of continuing on toward the northwest andtheir village, Tarzan guided them almost directly west, untilon the morning of the thirty-third day he bade them breakcamp and return to their own village, leaving the gold wherethey had stacked it the previous night.

"And you, Waziri?" they asked.

"I shall remain here for a few days, my children," he replied."Now hasten back to thy wives and children."

When they had gone Tarzan gathered up two of the ingotsand, springing into a tree, ran lightly above the tangled andimpenetrable mass of undergrowth for a couple of hundred yards,to emerge suddenly upon a circular clearing about which thegiants of the jungle forest towered like a guardian host.In the center of this natural amphitheater, was a littleflat-topped mound of hard earth.

Hundreds of times before had Tarzan been to this secludedspot, which was so densely surrounded by thorn bushesand tangled vines and creepers of huge girth thatnot even Sheeta, the leopard, could worm his sinuous waywithin, nor Tantor, with his giant strength, force thebarriers which protected the council chamber of the greatapes from all but the harmless denizens of the savage jungle.

Fifty trips Tarzan made before he had deposited all theingots within the precincts of the amphitheater. Then fromthe hollow of an ancient, lightning-blasted tree he producedthe very spade with which he had uncovered the chest ofProfessor Archimedes Q. Porter which he had once, apelike,buried in this selfsame spot. With this he dug a long trench,into which he laid the fortune that his blacks had carriedfrom the forgotten treasure vaults of the city of Opar.

That night he slept within the amphitheater, and early thenext morning set out to revisit his cabin before returning tohis Waziri. Finding things as he had left them, he wentforth into the jungle to hunt, intending to bring his prey tothe cabin where he might feast in comfort, spending thenight upon a comfortable couch.

For five miles toward the south he roamed, toward thebanks of a fair-sized river that flowed into the sea about sixmiles from his cabin. He had gone inland about half a milewhen there came suddenly to his trained nostrils the onescent that sets the whole savage jungle aquiver--Tarzansmelled man.

The wind was blowing off the ocean, so Tarzan knew thatthe authors of the scent were west of him. Mixed with theman scent was the scent of Numa. Man and lion."I had better hasten," thought the ape-man, for he hadrecognized the scent of whites. "Numa may be a-hunting."

When he came through the trees to the edge of the junglehe saw a woman kneeling in prayer, and before her stood awild, primitive-looking white man, his face buried in his arms.Behind the man a mangy lion was advancing slowly toward thiseasy prey. The man's face was averted; the woman's bowedin prayer. He could not see the features of either.

Already Numa was about to spring. There was not asecond to spare. Tarzan could not even unsling his bow andfit an arrow in time to send one of his deadly poisonedshafts into the yellow hide. He was too far away to reachthe beast in time with his knife. There was but a singlehope--a lone alternative. And with the quickness of thoughtthe ape-man acted.

A brawny arm flew back--for the briefest fraction of aninstant a huge spear poised above the giant's shoulder--andthen the mighty arm shot out, and swift death tore throughthe intervening leaves to bury itself in the heart of theleaping lion. Without a sound he rolled over at the veryfeet of his intended victims--dead.

For a moment neither the man nor the woman moved. Then thelatter opened her eyes to look with wonder upon the deadbeast behind her companion. As that beautiful head wentup Tarzan of the Apes gave a gasp of incredulous astonishment.Was he mad? It could not be the woman he loved!But, indeed, it was none other.

And the woman rose, and the man took her in his armsto kiss her, and of a sudden the ape-man saw red througha bloody mist of murder, and the old scar upon hisforehead burned scarlet against his brown hide.

There was a terrible expression upon his savage face as hefitted a poisoned shaft to his bow. An ugly light gleamedin those gray eyes as he sighted full at the back of theunsuspecting man beneath him.

For an instant he glanced along the polished shaft,drawing the bowstring far back, that the arrow might piercethrough the heart for which it was aimed.

But he did not release the fatal messenger. Slowly thepoint of the arrow drooped; the scar upon the brownforehead faded; the bowstring relaxed; and Tarzan of the Apes,with bowed head, turned sadly into the jungle toward thevillage of the Waziri.