I myself had once been a prisoner of the cruel hordes of northern
Warhoon, and the memory of the underground dungeon in which I
lay still is vivid in my memory. And so I felt certain that Tars
Tarkas lay in the dark pits beneath some nearby building, and that
in that direction I should find the trail of the three warriors
leading to his cell.
Nor was I wrong. At the bottom of the runway, or rather at the
landing on the floor below, I saw that the shaft descended into
the pits beneath, and as I glanced down the flickering light of a
torch revealed the presence of the three I was trailing.
Down they went toward the pits beneath the structure, and at a
safe distance behind I followed the flicker of their torch. The
way led through a maze of tortuous corridors, unlighted save for
the wavering light they carried. We had gone perhaps a hundred
yards when the party turned abruptly through a doorway at their
right. I hastened on as rapidly as I dared through the darkness
until I reached the point at which they had left the corridor.
There, through an open door, I saw them removing the chains that
secured the great Thark, Tars Tarkas, to the wall.
Hustling him roughly between them, they came immediately from the
chamber, so quickly in fact that I was near to being apprehended.
But I managed to run along the corridor in the direction I had been
going in my pursuit of them far enough to be without the radius of
their meagre light as they emerged from the cell.
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