'Two Bolgani and a dozen or more Gomangani warriors are always upon duty there,' replied the old man.
The Gomangani would like to escape?'
'They have tried it many times in the past, I am told,' replied the old man, 'though never since I have lived here, and always they were caught and tortured. And all their race was punished and worked the harder because of these attempts upon the part of a few.'
'They are numerous—the Gomangani?'
'There are probably five thousand of them in the valley,' replied the old man.
'And how many Bolgani?' the ape-man asked.
'Between ten and eleven hundred.'
'Five to one,' murmured Tarzan, 'and yet they are afraid to attempt to escape.'
'But you must remember,' said the old man, 'that the Bolgani are the dominant and intelligent race—the others are intellectually little above the beasts of the forest.'
'Yet they are men,' Tarzan reminded him.
'In figure only,' replied the old man. 'They cannot band together as men do. They have not as yet reached the community plane of evolution. It is true that families reside in a single village, but that idea, together with their weapons, was given to them by the Bolgani that they might not be entirely exterminated by the lions and panthers.
'Formerly, I am told, each individual Gomangani, when he became old enough to hunt for himself, constructed a hut apart from others and took up his solitary life, there being at that time no slightest semblance of family life. Then the Bolgani taught them how to build palisaded villages and compelled the men and women to remain in them and rear their children to maturity, after which the children were required to remain in the village, so that now some of the communities can claim as many as forty or fifty people. But the death rate is high among them, and they cannot multiply as rapidly as people living under normal conditions of peace and security. The brutalities of the Bolgani kill many; the carnivora take a considerable toll.'
'Five to one, and still they remain in slavery—what cowards they must be,' said the ape-man.
'On the contrary, they are far from cowardly,' replied the old man. 'They will face a lion with the utmost bravery. But for so many ages have they been subservient to the will of the Bolgani, that it has become a fixed habit in them—as the fear of God is inherent in us, so is the fear of the Bolgani inherent in the minds of the Gomangani from birth.'
'It is interesting,' said Tarzan. 'But tell me now where the woman is of whom I have come in search.'
'She is your mate?' asked the old man.
'No,' replied Tarzan. 'I told the Gomangani that she was, so that they would protect her. She is La, queen of Opar, High Priestess of the Flaming God.'
The old man looked his incredulity. 'Impossible!' he cried. 'It cannot be that the queen of Opar has risked her life by coming to the home of her hereditary enemies.'
'She was forced to it,' replied Tarzan, 'her life being threatened by a part of her people because she had refused to sacrifice me to their god.'
'If the Bolgani knew this there would be great rejoicing,” replied the old man.
'Tell me where she is,' demanded Tarzan. 'She preserved me from her people, and I must save her from whatever fate the Bolgani contemplate for her.'
'It is hopeless,' said the old man. 'I can tell you where she is, but you cannot rescue her.'
'I can try,' replied the ape-man.
'But you will fail and die.'
'If what you tell me is true, that there is absolutely no chance of my escaping from the valley, I might as well die,' replied the ape-man. 'However, I do not agree with you.'
The old man shrugged. 'You do not know the Bolgani,' he said.
'Tell me where the woman is,' said Tarzan.
'Look,' replied the old man, motioning Tarzan to follow him into his apartment, and approaching a window which faced toward the west, he pointed towards a strange flat tower which rose above the roof of the main building near the west end of the palace. 'She is probably somewhere in the interior of that tower,' said the old man to Tarzan, 'but as far as you are concerned, she might as well be at the north pole.'
Tarzan stood in silence for a moment, his keen eyes taking in every salient detail of the prospect before him. He saw the strange, flat-topped tower, which it seemed to him might be reached from the roof of the main building. He saw, too, branches of the ancient trees that sometimes topped the roof itself, and except for the dim light shining through some of the palace windows he saw no signs of life. He turned suddenly upon the old man.
'I do not know you,' he said, 'but I believe that I may trust you, since after all blood ties are strong, and we are the only men of our race in this valley. You might gain something in favor by betraying me, but I cannot believe that you will do it.'
'Do not fear,' said the old man, 'I hate them. If I could help you I would, but I know that there is no hope of success for whatever plan you may have in mind—the woman will never be rescued; you will never leave the Valley of the Palace of Diamonds—you will never leave the palace itself unless the Bolgani wish it.'
The ape-man grinned. 'You have been here so long,' he said, 'that you are beginning to assume the attitude of mind that keeps the Gomangani in perpetual slavery. If you want to escape, come with me. We may not succeed, but at least you will have a better chance if you try than as if you remained forever in this tower.'
The old man shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'it is hopeless. If escape had been possible I should have been away from here long ago.'
'Good-bye then,' said Tarzan, and swinging out of the window he clambered toward the roof below, along the stout stem of the old ivy.
The old man watched him for a moment until he saw him make his way carefully across the roof toward the flat-topped tower where he hoped to find and liberate La. Then the old fellow turned and hurried rapidly down the crude stairway that rose ladder-like to the center of the tower.
Tarzan made his way across the uneven roof of the main building, clambering up the sides of its higher elevations and dropping again to its lower levels as he covered a considerable distance between the east tower and that flat-topped structure of peculiar design in which La was supposed to be incarcerated. His progress was slow, for he moved with the caution of a beast of prey, stopping often in dense shadows to listen.
When at last he reached the tower, he found that it had many openings letting upon the roof-openings which were closed only with hangings of the heavy tapestried stuff which he had seen in the tower. Drawing one of these slightly aside he looked within upon a large chamber, bare of furnishings, from the center of which there protruded through a circular aperture the top of a stairway similar to that he had ascended in the east tower. There was no one in sight within the chamber, and Tarzan crossed immediately to the stairway. Peering cautiously into the opening Tarzan saw that the stairway descended for a great distance, passing many floors. How far it went he could not judge, except it seemed likely that it pierced subterranean chambers beneath the palace. Sounds of life came up to him through the shaft, and odors, too, but the latter largely nullified, in so far as the scent impressions which they offered Tarzan were concerned, by the heavy incense which pervaded the entire palace.
It was this perfume that was to prove the ape-man's undoing, for otherwise his keen nostrils would have detected the scent of a near-by Gomangani. The fellow lay behind one of the hangings at an aperture in the tower wall. He had been lying in such a position that he had seen Tarzan enter the chamber, and he was watching him now as the ape-man stood looking down the shaft of the stairway. The eyes of the black had at first gone wide in terror at sight of this strange apparition, the like of which he had never seen before. Had the creature been of sufficient intelligence to harbor superstition, he would have thought Tarzan a god descended from above. But being of too low an order to possess any imagination whatsoever, he merely knew that he saw a strange creature, and that all strange creatures must be enemies, he was convinced. His duty was to apprise his masters of this presence in the palace, but he did not dare to move until the apparition had reached a sufficient distance from him to ensure that the movements of the Gomangani would not be noticed by the intruder—he did not care to call attention to himself, for he had found that the more one effaced oneself in the presence of the Bolgani, the less one was likely to suffer.
For a long time the stranger peered down the shaft of the stairway, and for a long time the Gomangani lay quietly watching him. But at last the former descended the stairs and passed out of sight of the watcher, who
