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Just within the doorway stood a girl. Except in her garments she differed little from the type of girls I had known on Earth, except that her slim figure exhibited a suppleness superior to theirs. Her hair was intensely black, her skin white as alabaster. Her lissome limbs were barely concealed by a light, tuniclike garment, sleeveless, low-necked, revealing the greater part of her ivory breasts. This garment was girdled at her lithe waist, and came to within a few inches above her knees. Soft sandals encased her slender feet. She was standing in an attitude of awed fascination, her dark eyes wide, her crimson lips parted. As I wheeled and glared at her, she gave back with a quick gasp of surprise or fear, and fled lightly from the chamber.

I stared after her. If she were typical of the people of the city, then surely the effect produced by the brutish masonry was an illusion, for she seemed the product of some gentle and refined civilization, allowing for a certain barbaric suggestion about her costume.

While so musing, I heard the tramp of feet, harsh voices were lifted in argument, and the next instant a group of men strode into the chamber, halting as they saw me conscious and on my feet. Still thinking of the girl, I glared at them in surprise. They were of the same type as the others I had seen, huge, hairy, ferocious, with the same apelike forward-thrust heads and formidable faces. Some, I noticed, were darker than others, but all were dark and fierce, and the whole effect was one of somber and ferocious savagery. They were instinct with ferocity; it blazed in their icy-gray eyes, reflected in the snarling lift of their bristling lips, rumbled in their rough voices.

All were armed, and their hands seemed instinctively to seek their hilts as they stood glaring at me, their shaggy heads thrust forward in their apelike manner.

“Thak!” one exclaimed, or rather roared—all their voices were as gusty as a sea wind—“he’s conscious!”

“Do you suppose he can speak or understand human language?” rumbled another.

All this while I had stood glaring back at them, wondering anew at their speech. Now I realized that they were not speaking English.

The thing was so unnatural that it gave me a shock. They were not speaking any Earthly language, and I realized it, yet I understood them, except for various words which apparently had no counterpart on Earth. I made no attempt to understand this seemingly impossible phenomenon, but answered the last speaker.

“I can speak and understand.” I grunted. “Who are you? What city is this? Why did you attack me? Why am I in chains?”

They rumbled in amazement, with much tugging of mustaches, shaking of heads, and uncouth profanity.

“He talks, by Thak!” said one. “I tell you, he is from beyond the Girdle!”

“From beyond my hip!” broke in another rudely. “He is a freak, a damned, smooth-skinned degenerate misfit which should not have been born, or allowed to exist.”

“Ask him how he came by the Bonecrusher’s poniard,” requested yet another.

“Did you steal this from Logar?” he demanded.

“I stole nothing!” I snapped, feeling like a wild beast being prodded through the bars of a cage by unfeeling and critical spectators. My rages, like all the emotions on that wild planet, were without restraint.

“I took that poniard from the man who carried it, and I took it in a fair fight,” I added.

“Did you slay him?” they demanded unbelievingly.

“No,” I growled. “We fought with our bare hands, until he tried to knife me. Then I knocked him senseless.”

A roar greeted my words. I thought at first they were clamoring with rage; then I made out that they were arguing among themselves.

“I tell you he lies!” one bull’s bellow rose above the tumult. “We all know that Logar the Bonecrusher is not the man to be thrashed and stripped by a smooth-skinned hairless brown man like this. Ghor the Bear might be a match for Logar. No one else.”

“Well, there’s the poniard,” someone pointed out.

The clamor rose again, and in an instant the disputants were yelling and cursing, and brandishing their hairy fists in one another’s faces, hands fumbled at sword hilts, and challenges and defiances were exchanged freely.

I looked to see a general throat-cutting, but presently one who seemed in some authority drew his sword and began banging the hilt on the rude bench, at the same time drowning out the voices of the others with his bull-like bellowing.

“Shut up! Shut up! Let another man open his mouth and I’ll split his head!” As the clamor subsided and the disputants glared venomously at him, he continued in a voice as calm as if nothing had occurred. “It’s neither here nor there about the poniard. He might have caught Logar sleeping and brained him, or he might have stolen it, or found it. Are we Logar’s brothers, that we should seek after his welfare?”

A general snarl answered this. Evidently the man called Logar was not popular among them.