When Tarzan realized the trick that had been so neatly played upon him he had awaited expectantly the coming of the lion, for though the scent of ja was old he was sure that sooner or later they would let one of the beasts in upon him.His first consideration was a thorough exploration of his prison.He had noticed the hide-covered windows and these he immediately uncovered, letting in the light, and revealing the fact that though the chamber was far below the level of the temple courts it was yet many feet above the base of the hill from which the temple was hewn.The windows were so closely barred that he could not see over the edge of the thick wall in which they were cut to determine what lay close in below him.At a little distance were the blue waters of Jad-in-lul and beyond, the verdure-clad farther shore, and beyond that the mountains.It was a beautiful picture upon which he looked--a picture of peace and harmony and quiet.
Nor anywhere a slightest suggestion of the savage men and beasts that claimed this lovely landscape as their own.What a paradise!
And some day civilized man would come and--spoil it! Ruthless axes would raze that age-old wood; black, sticky smoke would rise from ugly chimneys against that azure sky; grimy little boats with wheels behind or upon either side would churn the mud from the bottom of Jad-in-lul, turning its blue waters to a dirty brown; hideous piers would project into the lake from squalid buildings of corrugated iron, doubtless, for of such are the pioneer cities of the world.
But would civilized man come? Tarzan hoped not.For countless generations civilization had ramped about the globe; it had dispatched its emissaries to the North Pole and the South; it had circled Pal-ul-don once, perhaps many times, but it had never touched her.God grant that it never would.Perhaps He was saving this little spot to be always just as He had made it, for the scratching of the Ho-don and the Waz-don upon His rocks had not altered the fair face of Nature.
Through the windows came sufficient light to reveal the whole interior to Tarzan.The room was fairly large and there was a door at each end--a large door for men and a smaller one for lions.Both were closed with heavy masses of stone that had been lowered in grooves running to the floor.The two windows were small and closely barred with the first iron that Tarzan had seen in Pal-ul-don.The bars were let into holes in the casing, and the whole so strongly and neatly contrived that escape seemed impossible.Yet within a few minutes of his incarceration Tarzan had commenced to undertake his escape.The old knife in his pouch was brought into requisition and slowly the ape-man began to scrape and chip away the stone from about the bars of one of the windows.It was slow work but Tarzan had the patience of absolute health.
Each day food and water were brought him and slipped quickly beneath the smaller door which was raised just sufficiently to allow the stone receptacles to pass in.The prisoner began to believe that he was being preserved for something beside lions.
However that was immaterial.If they would but hold off for a few more days they might select what fate they would--he would not be there when they arrived to announce it.
And then one day came Pan-sat, Lu-don's chief tool, to the city of Tu-lur.He came ostensibly with a fair message for Mo-sar from the high priest at A-lur.Lu-don had decided that Mo-sar should be king and he invited Mo-sar to come at once to A-lur and then Pan-sat, having delivered the message, asked that he might go to the temple of Tu-lur and pray, and there he sought the high priest of Tu-lur to whom was the true message that Lu-don had sent.The two were closeted alone in a little chamber and Pan-sat whispered into the ear of the high priest.
"Mo-sar wishes to be king," he said, "and Lu-don wishes to be king.Mo-sar wishes to retain the stranger who claims to be the Dor-ul-Otho and Lu-don wishes to kill him, and now," he leaned even closer to the ear of the high priest of Tu-lur, "if you would be high priest at A-lur it is within your power."
Pan-sat ceased speaking and waited for the other's reply.The high priest was visibly affected.To be high priest at A-lur!
That was almost as good as being king of all Pal-ul-don, for great were the powers of him who conducted the sacrifices upon the altars of A-lur.
"How?" whispered the high priest."How may I become high priest at A-lur?"
Again Pan-sat leaned close: "By killing the one and bringing the other to A-lur," replied he.Then he rose and departed knowing chat the other had swallowed the bait and could be depended upon to do whatever was required to win him the great prize.
Nor was Pan-sat mistaken other than in one trivial consideration.
This high priest would indeed commit murder and treason to attain the high office at A-lur; but he had misunderstood which of his victims was to be killed and which to be delivered to Lu-don.
Pan-sat, knowing himself all the details of the plannings of Lu-don, had made the quite natural error of assuming that the ocher was perfectly aware that only by publicly sacrificing the false Dor-ul-Otho could the high priest at A-lur bolster his waning power and that the assassination of Mo-sar, the pretender, would remove from Lu-don's camp the only obstacle to his combining the offices of high priest and king.The high priest at Tu-lur thought that he had been commissioned to kill Tarzan and bring Mo-sar to A-lur.He also thought that when he had done these things he would be made high priest at A-lur; but he did not know that already the priest had been selected who was to murder him within the hour that he arrived at A-lur, nor did he know that a secret grave had been prepared for him in the floor of a subterranean chamber in the very temple he dreamed of controlling.