The lights, being the most noticeable things in the room, had been the first to attract the ape-man’s attention, but now his eyes wandered to the other occupants of the room. There were fifty or a hundred men of about his own height; but they were garbed and armed as had been the little men of Trohanadalmakus and Veltopismakus. Tarzan knit his brows and looked long and steadily at them. Who were they? Where was he?
As consciousness spread slowly throughout his body he realized that he was in pain and that his arms felt heavy and numb. He tried to move them, only to discover that he could not—they were securely bound behind his back. He moved his feet—they were not secured. At last, after considerable effort, for he found that he was very weak, he raised himself to a sitting posture and looked about him. The room was filled with warriors who looked precisely like the little Veltopismakusians, but they were as large as normal men, and the room itself was immense. There were a number of benches and tables standing about the floor and most of the men either were seated upon the benches or lay stretched upon the hard earth. A few men moved about among them and seemed to be working over them. Then it was that Tarzan saw that nearly all within the chamber were suffering from wounds, many of them severe ones. The men who moved about among them were evidently attending to the wounded, and those, who might have been the nurses, were garbed in white tunics like the high caste slaves of Trohanadalmakus. In addition to the wounded and the nurses there were a half a dozen armed warriors who were uninjured. One of these was the first to espy Tarzan after he had raised himself to a sitting posture.
“Ho!” shouted he. “The giant has come into his senses,” and crossing the room he approached the ape-man. Standing before him, his feet wide spread, he eyed Tarzan with a broad grin upon his face. “Your great bulk availed you little,” he taunted, “and now we are as large as you. We, too, are giants, eh?” and he turned to his fellows with a laugh in which they joined him.
Seeing that he was a prisoner, surrounded by enemies, the ape-man fell back upon that lifelong characteristic of the wild beast—sullen silence. He made no reply, but only sat there regarding them with the savage, level gaze of the brute at bay.
“He is dumb like the great beast-women of the caves,” said the warrior to his fellows.
“Perhaps he is one of them,” suggested another.
“Yes,” seconded a third, “perhaps he is one of the Zertalacolols.”
“But their men are all cowards,” urged the first speaker; “and this one fought like a warrior born.”
“Yes, with his bare hands he fought till he went down.”
“You should have seen how he threw diadets and warriors as one might pick up tiny pebbles and hurl them afar.”
“He would not give a step, or run; and always he smiled.”
“He does not look like the men of the Zertalacolols; ask him if he is.”
He who had first addressed him put the question to Tarzan, but the ape-man only continued to glare at them.
“He does not understand me,” said the warrior. “I do not think that he is a Zertalacolol, though. What he is, however, I do not know.”
He approached and examined Tarzan’s wounds. “These will soon be healed. In seven days, or less, he will be fit for the quarries.”
They sprinkled a brown powder upon his wounds and brought him food and water and the milk of antelopes, and when they found that his arms were swelling badly and becoming discolored they brought an iron chain and, fastening one end about his waist with a clumsy padlock, secured him to a ring in the stone wall of the chamber, and cut the bonds from his wrists.
As they believed that he did not understand their language they spoke freely before him, but as their tongue was almost identical with that employed by the Trohanadalmakusians Tarzan understood everything that they said, and thus he learned that the battle before the city of Adendrohahkis had not gone as well for the Veltopismakusians as Elkomoelhago, their king, had desired. They had lost many in killed and prisoners and in return had not killed near so many of the enemy and had taken comparatively few prisoners, though Elkomoelhago, he learned, considered him worth the entire cost of the brief war.
How they had changed themselves into men of his own stature Tarzan could not comprehend, nor did any of the remarks he overheard shed any light upon this mystery of mysteries. But the climax of improbability was attained a few days later when he saw pass through the corridor, upon which the room of his incarceration was located, a file of warriors as large as he, each of whom was mounted upon a huge antelope fully as tall at the shoulder as the great Eland, though obviously, from its contour and markings, a Royal Antelope, which is the smallest known. Tarzan ran his brown fingers through his thatch of black hair and gave up attempting to solve the enigmas that surrounded him.
His wounds healed quickly, as did those of the Veltopismakusians who were convalescing about him, and upon the seventh day a half-dozen warriors came for him and the chain was removed from about his waist that he might accompany them. His captors had long since ceased to address him, believing that he was ignorant of their language, which meant to them that he was as speechless as an Alalus, since they could conceive of no language other than their own; but from their conversation, as they led him from the chamber and along a circular corridor, he discovered that he
