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as we could see, was unoccupied.
    Without more ado I swung the door wide open and, followed by the huge
Thark, stepped into the chamber. As we stood for a moment in silence
gazing about the room a slight noise behind caused me to turn quickly,
when, to my astonishment, I saw the door close with a sharp click as
though by an unseen hand.
    Instantly I sprang toward it to wrench it open again, for something in
the uncanny movement of the thing and the tense and almost palpable
silence of the chamber seemed to portend a lurking evil lying hidden in
this rock-bound chamber within the bowels of the Golden Cliffs.
    My fingers clawed futilely at the unyielding portal, while my eyes
sought in vain for a duplicate of the button which had given us ingress.
    And then, from unseen lips, a cruel and mocking peal of laughter rang
through the desolate place.

Chapter III - The Chamber of Mystery
*
    For moments after that awful laugh had ceased reverberating through the
rocky room, Tars Tarkas and I stood in tense and expectant silence.
But no further sound broke the stillness, nor within the range of our
vision did aught move.
    At length Tars Tarkas laughed softly, after the manner of his strange
kind when in the presence of the horrible or terrifying. It is not an
hysterical laugh, but rather the genuine expression of the pleasure
they derive from the things that move Earth men to loathing or to tears.
    Often and again have I seen them roll upon the ground in mad fits of
uncontrollable mirth when witnessing the death agonies of women and
little children beneath the torture of that hellish green Martian
fete—the Great Games.
    I looked up at the Thark, a smile upon my own lips, for here in truth
was greater need for a smiling face than a trembling chin.
    “What do you make of it all?” I asked. “Where in the deuce are we?”
    He looked at me in surprise.
    “Where are we?” he repeated. “Do you tell me, John Carter, that you
know not where you be?”
    “That I am upon Barsoom is all that I can guess, and but for you and
the great white apes I should not even guess that, for the sights I
have seen this day are as unlike the things of my beloved Barsoom as I
knew it ten long years ago as they are unlike the world of my birth.
    “No, Tars Tarkas, I know not where we be.”
    “Where have you been since you opened the mighty portals of the
atmosphere plant years ago, after the keeper had died and the engines
stopped and all Barsoom was dying, that had not already died, of
asphyxiation? Your body even was never found, though the men of a
whole world sought after it for years, though the Jeddak of Helium and
his granddaughter, your princess, offered such fabulous rewards that
even princes of royal blood joined in the search.
    “There was but one conclusion to reach when all efforts to locate you
had failed, and that, that you had taken the long, last pilgrimage down
the mysterious River Iss, to await in the Valley Dor upon the shores of
the Lost Sea of Korus the beautiful Dejah Thoris, your princess.
    “Why you had gone none could guess, for your princess still lived—”
    “Thank God,” I interrupted him. “I did not dare to ask you, for I
feared I might have been too late to save her—she was very low when I
left her in the royal gardens of Tardos Mors that long-gone night; so
very low that I scarcely hoped even then to reach the atmosphere plant
ere her dear spirit had fled from me for ever. And she lives yet?”
    “She lives, John Carter.”
    “You have not told me where we are,” I reminded him.
    “We are where I expected to find you, John Carter—and another. Many
years ago you heard the story of the woman who taught me the thing that
green Martians are reared to hate, the woman who taught me to love.
You know the cruel tortures and the awful death her love won for her at
the hands of the beast, Tal Hajus.
    “She, I thought, awaited me by the Lost Sea of Korus.
    “You know that it was left for a man from another world,