remotest chance for escape in that direction I turned my attention
again toward the forest.

The cliffs towered above me a good five thousand feet. The sun
was not quite upon them and they loomed a dull yellow in their own
shade. Here and there they were broken with streaks and patches
of dusky red, green, and occasional areas of white quartz.

Altogether they were very beautiful, but I fear that I did not
regard them with a particularly appreciative eye on this, my first
inspection of them.

Just then I was absorbed in them only as a medium of escape, and
so, as my gaze ran quickly, time and again, over their vast expanse
in search of some cranny or crevice, I came suddenly to loathe them
as the prisoner must loathe the cruel and impregnable walls of his
dungeon.

Tars Tarkas was approaching me rapidly, and still more rapidly came
the awful horde at his heels.

It seemed the forest now or nothing, and I was just on the point of
motioning Tars Tarkas to follow me in that direction when the sun
passed the cliff's zenith, and as the bright rays touched the dull
surface it burst out into a million scintillant lights of burnished
gold, of flaming red, of soft greens, and gleaming whites--a more
gorgeous and inspiring spectacle human eye has never rested upon.

The face of the entire cliff was, as later inspection conclusively
proved, so shot with veins and patches of solid gold as to quite