As Tarzan and Komodoflorensal realized that Talaskar and Janzara lay exposed to the savage assault of the hungry beasts they both sprang quickly toward the two girls. As had been the case when Komodoflorensal had shot into the pit, the cats were startled by the sudden appearance of these two new humans, and in the first instant of their surprise had leaped again to the far end of the chamber.
Janzara had lost her dagger as the two girls had fallen into the shaft and now Talaskar saw it lying on the floor beside her. Releasing her hold upon the princess she seized the weapon and leaped to her feet. Already Tarzan and Komodoflorensal were at her side and the cats were returning to the attack.
Janzara arose slowly and half-bewildered. She looked about, terror disfiguring her marvelous beauty, and as she did so the man in the adjoining chamber saw her.
'Janzara!' he cried. 'My Princess, I come!' and seizing the bench upon which he had been sitting, and the only thing within the chamber that might be converted into a weapon, he swung wide the gate and leaped into the chamber where the four were now facing the thoroughly infuriated beasts.
Both animals, bleeding from many wounds, were mad with pain, rage and hunger. Screaming and growling they threw themselves upon the swords of the two men, who had pushed the girls behind them and were backing slowly toward the gate, and then the man with the bench joined Tarzan and Komodoflorensal and the three fought back the charges of the infuriated carnivores.
The bench proved fully as good a weapon of defense as the swords and so together the five drew slowly back, until, quite suddenly and without the slightest warning both cats leaped quickly to one side and darted behind the party as though sensing that the women would prove easier prey. One of them came near to closing upon Janzara had not the man with the bench, imbued apparently with demoniacal fury, leaped upon it with his strange weapon and beaten it back so desperately that it was forced to abandon the princess.
Even then the man did not cease to follow it but, brandishing the bench, pursued it and its fellow with such terrifying cries and prodigious blows that, to escape him, both cats suddenly dodged into the chamber that the man had occupied, and before they could return to the attack he with the bench had slammed the gate and fastened them upon its opposite side. Then he wheeled and faced the four.
'Zoanthrohago!' cried the princess.
'Your slave!' replied the noble, dropping to one knee and leaning far back, with outstretched arms.
'You have saved my life, Zoanthrohago,' said Janzara, 'and after all the indignities that I have heaped upon you! How can I reward you?'
'I love you, Princess, as you have long known,' replied the man; 'but now it is too late, for tomorrow I die by the king’s will. Elkomoelhago has spoken, and, even though you be his daughter, I do not hesitate to say his very ignorance prevents him ever changing a decision once reached.'
'I know,' said Janzara. 'He is my sire but I love him not. He killed my mother in a fit of unreasoning jealousy. He is a fool—the fool of fools.'
Suddenly she turned upon the others. 'These slaves would escape, Zoanthrohago,' she cried. 'With my aid they might accomplish it. With their company we might succeed in escaping, too, and in finding an asylum in their own land.'
'If any one of them is of sufficient power in his native city,' replied Zoanthrohago.
'This one,' said Tarzan, seeing a miraculous opportunity for freedom, 'is the son of Adendrohahkis, King of Trohanadalmakus—the oldest son, and Zertolosto.'
Janzara looked at Tarzan a moment after he had done speaking. 'I was wicked, Zuanthrol,' she said; 'but I thought that I wanted you and being the daughter of a king I have seldom been denied aught that I craved,' and then to Talaskar: 'Take your man, my girl, and may you be happy with him,' and she pushed Talaskar gently toward the ape-man; but Talaskar drew back.
'You are mistaken, Janzara,' she said, 'I do not love Zuanthrol, nor does he love me.'
Komodoflorensal looked quickly at Tarzan as though expecting that he would quickly deny the truth of Talaskar's statement, but the ape-man only nodded his head in assent.
'Do you mean,' demanded Komodoflorensal, 'that you do not love Talaskar?' and he looked straight into the eyes of his friend.
'On the contrary, I love her very much,' replied Tarzan; 'but not in the way that you have believed, or should I say feared? I love her because she is a good girl and a kind girl and a loyal friend, and also because she was in trouble and needed the love and protection which you and I alone could give her; but as a man loves his mate, I do not love her, for I have a mate of my own in my country beyond the thorns.'
Komodoflorensal said no more, but he thought a great deal. He thought of what it would mean to return to his own city where he was the Zertolosto, and where, by all the customs of ages, he would be supposed to marry a princess from another city. But he did not want a princess—he wanted Talaskar, the little slave girl of Veltopismakus, who scarcely knew her own mother and most probably had never heard that of her father, if her mother knew it.
He wanted Talaskar, but he could only have her in Trohandalmakus as a slave. His love for her was real and so he would not insult her by thinking such a thing as that. If he could not make her his princess he would not have her at all, and so Komodoflorensal, the son of Adendrohahkis, was sad.
But he had none too much time to dwell upon his sorrow now, for the others were planning the best means for escape.
'The keepers come down to feed the cats upon this side,' said Zoanthrohago, indicating a small door in the wall of the pit opposite that which led into the chamber in which he had been incarcerated.
'Doubtless it is not locked, either,' said Janzara, 'for a prisoner could not reach it without crossing through this chamber where the cats were kept.'
'We will see,' said Tarzan, and crossed to the door.
A moment sufficed to force it open, revealing a narrow corridor beyond. One after another the five crawled through the small aperture and following the corridor ascended an acclivity, lighting their way with candles taken from the den of the carnivores. At the top a door opened into a wide corridor, a short distance down which stood a warrior, evidently on guard before a door.
Janzara looked through the tiny crack that Tarzan had opened the door and saw the corridor and the man. 'Good!' she exclaimed. 'It is my own corridor and the warrior is on guard before my door. I know him well. Through me he has escaped payment of his taxes for the past thirty moons. He would die for me. Come! We have nothing to fear,' and stepping boldly into the corridor she approached the sentry, the others following behind her.
Until he recognized her there was danger that the fellow would raise an alarm, but the moment he saw who it was he was as wax in her hands.
'You are blind,' she told him.
'If the Princess Janzara wishes it,' he replied.
She told him what she wished—five diadets and some heavy, warriors' wraps. He eyed those who were with her, and evidently recognized Zoanthrohago and guessed who the two other men were.
'Not only shall I be blind for my princess,' he said; 'but tomorrow I shall be dead for her.'
'Fetch six diadets, then,' said the princess.
Then she turned to Komodoflorensal 'You are Prince Royal of Trohanadalmakus?' she asked.
'I am,' he replied.
'And if we show you the way to liberty you will not enslave us?'
'I shall take you to the city as my own slaves and then liberate you,' he replied.
'It is something that has seldom if ever been done,' she mused; 'not in the memory of living man in Veltopismakus. I wonder if your sire will permit it.'
'The thing is not without precedent,' replied Komodoflorensal 'It has been done but rarely, yet it has been done. I think you may feel assured of a friendly welcome at the court of Adendrohahkis, where the wisdom of Zoanthrohago will not go unappreciated or unrewarded.'
It was a long time before the warrior returned with the diadets. His face was covered with perspiration and his hands with blood.
'I had to fight for them,' he said, 'and we shall have to fight to use them if we do not hurry. Here, Prince, I brought you weapons,' and he handed a sword and dagger to Zoanthrohago.
They mounted quickly. It was Tarzan's first experience upon one of the wiry, active, little mounts of the Minunians; but he found the saddle well designed and the diadet easily controlled.
