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Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875-1950

"Gods of Mars"

Here was a pretty fix, indeed!
Once back at the point where the five passageways met, I might
wait with some assurance for the return of the warriors with Tars
Tarkas. My knowledge of their customs lent colour to the belief
that he was but being escorted to the audience chamber to have
sentence passed upon him. I had not the slightest doubt but that
they would preserve so doughty a warrior as the great Thark for
the rare sport he would furnish at the Great Games.
But unless I could find my way back to that point the chances
were most excellent that I would wander for days through the awful
blackness, until, overcome by thirst and hunger, I lay down to die,
or--What was that!
A faint shuffling sounded behind me, and as I cast a hasty glance
over my shoulder my blood froze in my veins for the thing I saw
there. It was not so much fear of the present danger as it was the
horrifying memories it recalled of that time I near went mad over
the corpse of the man I had killed in the dungeons of the Warhoons,
when blazing eyes came out of the dark recesses and dragged the
thing that had been a man from my clutches and I heard it scraping
over the stone of my prison as they bore it away to their terrible
feast.
And now in these black pits of the other Warhoons I looked into
those same fiery eyes, blazing at me through the terrible darkness,
revealing no sign of the beast behind them.


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