"We shall take you to our village where you will be well fed," replied the creature. "You cannot escape us; no one escapes the Horibs." The ape-man hesitated. The Red Flower of Zoram moved closer to his side. "Let us go with them," she whispered. "We cannot escape them now; there are too many of them. Possibly if we go with them we shall find an opportunity later." Tarzan nodded and then he turned to the Horib. "We are ready," he said. Mounted upon the necks of Gorobors, each in front of a Horib warrior, they were carried across a corner of the Gyor Cors to the same gloomy forest through which Jason and Thoar had been taken, though they entered it from a different direction. Rising at the east end of the Mountains of the Thipdars, a river flows in a southeasterly direction entering upon its course the gloomy forest of the Horibs, through which it runs down to the Rela Am, or River of Darkness. It was near the confluence of these two rivers that the Korsars had been attacked by the Horibs and it was along the upper reaches of the same river that Tarzan and Jana were being conducted down stream toward the village of the lizard-men. The lake of the Horibs lies at a considerable distance from the eastern end of the Mountains of the Thipdars, perhaps five hundred miles, and where there is no time and distances are measured by food and sleep it makes little difference whether places are separated by five miles or five hundred. One man might travel a thousand miles without mishap, while another, in attempting to go one mile, might be killed, in which event the one mile would be much further than the thousand miles, for, in fact, it would have proved an interminable distance to him who had essayed it in this instance. As Tarzan and Jana rode through the dismal forest, hundreds of miles away Jason Gridley drew himself to a sitting position in such utter darkness that he could almost feel it. "God!" he exclaimed. "Who spoke?" asked a voice out of the darkness, and Jason recognized the voice as Thoar's. "It is I, Jason," replied Gridley. "Where are we?" demanded another voice. It was Lajo. "It is dark. I wish they had killed us," said a fourth voice. "Don't worry," said a fifth, "we shall be killed soon enough." "We are all here," said Jason. "I thought we were all done for when I saw them drag you into the water one by one." "Where are we?" demanded one of the Korsars. "What sort of hole is this into which they have put us?" "In the world from which I come," said Jason, "there are huge reptiles, called crocodiles, who build such nests or retreats in the banks of rivers, just above the water line, but the only entrance leads down below the waters of the river. It is such a hole as that into which we have been dragged." "Why can't we swim out again?" asked Thoar. "Perhaps we could," replied Jason, "but they would see us and bring us back again." "Are we going to lie here in the mud and wait to be slaughtered?" demanded Lajo.