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Updated: June 21, 2025
Here we may fall prey to the banths or the no less fierce Torquasians. There, at least, we shall find beings moulded after our own images. "All that causes me to hesitate," he added, "is the danger of taking you past so many banths. A single sword would scarce prevail were even a couple of them to charge simultaneously." "Do not fear on that score," replied the girl, smiling.
Guards sprang to drag Thuvia away, but ere they had succeeded she had hurled a volley of commands at the listening brutes, and as one they turned and marched back into their dens. "You need not fear them now, John Carter!" cried Thuvia, before they could silence her. "Those banths will never harm you now, nor Woola, either." It was all I cared to know.
"Let loose the death!" he cried, and immediately a dozen doors in the base of the tower swung open, and a dozen grim and terrible banths sprang into the arena. This was not the first time that I had faced the ferocious Barsoomian lion, but never had I been pitted, single-handed, against a full dozen of them.
There was no banth there, but something which surprised him infinitely more than would the presence of twenty banths. Before him yawned the mouth of a dark cave leading downward into the ground. Through this the banth must have disappeared. Was it his lair? Within its dark and forbidding interior might there not lurk not one but many of the fearsome creatures?
Carthoris looked at Thuvia in astonishment. Then he pointed toward the field. "Where are they?" he whispered. The girl looked her incredulity. "They lay in piles," she murmured. "There were thousands of them but a minute ago." "And now," continued Carthoris, "there remain but the banths and the carcasses of the green men."
Her face lighted with pleasure and relief. "You found it!" she exclaimed. "What fortune!" "It was fortune indeed," he replied. "Since it not only told that you were a prisoner here; but it saved me from the banths as I was crossing the valley from the hills to this tower into which I saw them take you this afternoon after your brave attempt at escape."
There was no escape. Beyond the enclosure the banths awaited him; within, his own kind, equally as merciless and ferocious. Among them there was no such thing as love, or loyalty, or friendship they were just brains. He might kill Luud; but what would that profit him? Another king would be loosed from his sealed chamber and Ghek would be killed.
Several times we passed the entrances to other chambers similarly peopled, and twice again we were compelled to cross directly through them. In others were chained prisoners and beasts. "Why is it that we see no therns?" I asked of Thuvia. "They seldom traverse the underworld at night, for then it is that the great banths prowl the dim corridors seeking their prey.
In another instant the banths would be upon me, but I could not force my gaze from the features of the red girl, for I knew that her expression meant anything but the enjoyment of the grim tragedy that would so soon be enacted below her; there was some deeper, hidden meaning which I sought to solve.
She saw the smile upon his lips, and it was as wine to sick nerves; for even upon warlike Barsoom where all men are brave, woman reacts quickly to quiet indifference to danger to dare-deviltry that is without bombast. "You may return your sword," she said. "I told you that the banths would not harm us. Look!" and as she spoke she stepped quickly toward the nearest animal.
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