Above him, through the aperture, Werper could see sunlight glancing from massive columns, which were twined about by clinging vines.He listened; but he heard no sound other than the soughing of the wind through leafy branches, the hoarse cries of birds, and the chattering of monkeys.
Boldly he ascended the stairway, to find himself in a circular court.Just before him stood a stone altar, stained with rusty-brown discolorations.At the time Werper gave no thought to an explanation of these stains--later their origin became all too hideously apparent to him.
Beside the opening in the floor, just behind the altar, through which he had entered the court from the subterranean chamber below, the Belgian discovered several doors leading from the enclosure upon the level of the floor.Above, and circling the courtyard, was a series of open balconies.Monkeys scampered about the deserted ruins, and gaily plumaged birds flitted in and out among the columns and the galleries far above; but no sign of human presence was discernible.Werper felt relieved.He sighed, as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.He took a step toward one of the exits, and then he halted, wide-eyed in astonishment and terror, for almost at the same instant a dozen doors opened in the courtyard wall and a horde of frightful men rushed in upon him.
They were the priests of the Flaming God of Opar--the same, shaggy, knotted, hideous little men who had dragged Jane Clayton to the sacrificial altar at this very spot years before.Their long arms, their short and crooked legs, their close-set, evil eyes, and their low, receding foreheads gave them a bestial appearance that sent a qualm of paralyzing fright through the shaken nerves of the Belgian.
With a scream he turned to flee back into the lesser terrors of the gloomy corridors and apartments from which he had just emerged, but the frightful men anticipated his intentions.They blocked the way;
they seized him, and though he fell, groveling upon his knees before them, begging for his life, they bound him and hurled him to the floor of the inner temple.
The rest was but a repetition of what Tarzan and Jane Clayton had passed through.The priestesses came, and with them La, the High Priestess.Werper was raised and laid across the altar.Cold sweat exuded from his every pore as La raised the cruel, sacrificial knife above him.The death chant fell upon his tortured ears.His staring eyes wandered to the golden goblets from which the hideous votaries would soon quench their inhuman thirst in his own, warm life-blood.
He wished that he might be granted the brief respite of unconsciousness before the final plunge of the keen blade--and then there was a frightful roar that sounded almost in his ears.The High Priestess lowered her dagger.Her eyes went wide in horror.The priestesses, her votaresses, screamed and fled madly toward the exits.The priests roared out their rage and terror according to the temper of their courage.
Werper strained his neck about to catch a sight of the cause of their panic, and when, at last he saw it, he too went cold in dread, for what his eyes beheld was the figure of a huge lion standing in the center of the temple, and already a single victim lay mangled beneath his cruel paws.
Again the lord of the wilderness roared, turning his baleful gaze upon the altar.La staggered forward, reeled, and fell across Werper in a swoon.