mighty strokes hastened with reckless speed through the dark and
tortuous channel until once again I came to the chamber into which
flowed the three branches of the river.

Two unexplored channels still remained from which to choose; nor
was there any means by which I could judge which was the more likely
to lead me to the plotters.

Never in my life, that I can recall, have I suffered such an agony
of indecision. So much depended upon a correct choice; so much
depended upon haste.

The hours that I had already lost might seal the fate of the
incomparable Dejah Thoris were she not already dead--to sacrifice
other hours, and maybe days in a fruitless exploration of another
blind lead would unquestionably prove fatal.

Several times I essayed the right-hand entrance only to turn back
as though warned by some strange intuitive sense that this was not
the way. At last, convinced by the oft-recurring phenomenon, I
cast my all upon the left-hand archway; yet it was with a lingering
doubt that I turned a parting look at the sullen waters which
rolled, dark and forbidding, from beneath the grim, low archway on
the right.

And as I looked there came bobbing out upon the current from the
Stygian darkness of the interior the shell of one of the great,
succulent fruits of the sorapus tree.

I could scarce restrain a shout of elation as this silent, insensate