The guards had no torches or light of any description.  In fact we had seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered Pellucidar.  In a land of perpetual noon there is no need of light above ground, yet I marveled that they had no means of lighting their way through these dark, subterranean passages.  So we crept along at a snail’s pace, with much stumbling and falling—­the guards keeping up a singsong chant ahead of us, interspersed with certain high notes which I found always indicated rough places and turns.

Halts were now more frequent, but I did not wish to speak to Dian until I could see from the expression of her face how she was receiving my apologies.  At last a faint glow ahead forewarned us of the end of the tunnel, for which I for one was devoutly thankful.  Then at a sudden turn we emerged into the full light of the noonday sun.

But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a real catastrophe—­Dian was gone, and with her a half-dozen other prisoners.  The guards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to behold.  Their awesome, bestial faces were contorted in the most diabolical expressions, as they accused each other of responsibility for the loss.  Finally they fell upon us, beating us with their spear shafts, and hatchets.  They had already killed two near the head of the line, and were like to have finished the balance of us when their leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter.  Never in all my life had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of bestial rage—­I thanked God that Dian had not been one of those left to endure it.

Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me each alternate one had been freed commencing with Dian.  Hooja was gone.  Ghak remained.  What could it mean?  How had it been accomplished?  The commander of the guards was investigating.  Soon he discovered that the rude locks which had held the neckbands in place had been deftly picked.

“Hooja the Sly One,” murmured Ghak, who was now next to me in line.  “He has taken the girl that you would not have,” he continued, glancing at me.

“That I would not have!” I cried.  “What do you mean?”

He looked at me closely for a moment.

“I have doubted your story that you are from another world,” he said at last, “but yet upon no other grounds could your ignorance of the ways of Pellucidar be explained.  Do you really mean that you do not know that you offended the Beautiful One, and how?”

“I do not know, Ghak,” I replied.

“Then shall I tell you.  When a man of Pellucidar intervenes between another man and the woman the other man would have, the woman belongs to the victor.  Dian the Beautiful belongs to you.  You should have claimed her or released her.  Had you taken her hand, it would have indicated your desire to make her your mate, and had you raised her hand above her head and then dropped it, it would have meant that you did not wish her for a mate and that you released her from all obligation to you.  By doing neither you have put upon her the greatest affront that a man may put upon a woman.  Now she is your slave.  No man will take her as mate, or may take her honorably, until he shall have overcome you in combat, and men do not choose slave women as their mates—­at least not the men of Pellucidar.”