Tarzan and the Ant Men · Chapter 16 (2/2)

Having finished their meal the two fugitives returned to the corridor and continued their way downward through the dome toward the first level, keeping always to the more crowded corridors, where detection seemed least likely. Now, mounted men were more frequently encountered and so rapidly and recklessly did the warriors ride along the narrow corridors that it was with difficulty that the pedestrians avoided being ridden down and trampled, and it seemed to Tarzan but little less than a miracle that any of them arrived at their destinations uninjured. Having at last come to the lowest level, they were engaged in searching for one of the four corridors that would lead them from the dome, when their way was completely blocked by a great throng that had congregated at the intersection of two corridors. Those in the rear were stretching their necks to observe what was going on in the center of the gathering. Everyone was asking questions of his neighbor, but as yet no one upon the outskirts of the mob appeared to know what had occurred, until at last fragments of rumors filtered back to the farthermost. Tarzan and Komodoflorensal dared ask no questions, but they kept their ears open and presently they were rewarded by overhearing repeated what seemed to be an authoritative account of what had transpired to cause this congestion. In answer to a question put by one of the throng a fellow who was elbowing his way out from the center of the jam explained that those in front had halted to view the remains of two slaves who had been killed while trying to escape.

“They were locked in one of Zoanthrohago’s slave cells at the very highest level,” he told his questioner, “and they tried to escape by climbing down an improvised ladder into the central shaft. Their ladder broke and they were precipitated to the roof of the throne room, where their bodies, terribly mangled, were but just found. They are being carried out to the beasts, now. One of them was a great loss to Zoanthrohago as it was the slave Zuanthrol, upon whom he was experimenting.”

“Ah,” exclaimed a listener, “I saw them but yesterday.”

“You would not know them today,” vouchsafed the informer, “so terribly are their faces disfigured.”

When the press of humanity had been relieved Tarzan and Komodoflorensal continued their way, finding that the Slaves’ Corridor lay just before them, and that it was down this avenue that the bodies of their victims of the previous night were being carried.

“What,” asked the ape-man, “did he mean by saying that they were being carried to the beasts?”

“It is the way in which we dispose of the bodies of slaves,” replied the Trohanadalmakusian. “They are carried to the edge of the jungle, where they are devoured by wild beasts. There are old and toothless lions near Trohanadalmakus that subsist entirely upon slave meat. They are our scavengers and so accustomed are they to being fed that they often come to meet the parties who bring out the corpses, pacing beside them, roaring and growling, until the spot is reached where the bodies are to be deposited.”

“You dispose of all your dead in this manner?”

“Only the slave dead. The bodies of warriors and nobles are burned.”

“In a short time, then,” continued Tarzan, “there will be no danger of there ever being a correct identification of those two,” he jerked his thumb along the corridor ahead, where the bodies of the two dead warriors were being bounced and jolted along upon the backs of diadets.