"I do not know," replied Tarzan. "The man took it with him when
he slipped away during the night. Since you are so desirous for
its return I would look for him and get it back for you, did you
not hold me prisoner; but now that I am to die I cannot get it
back. Of what good was your knife, anyway? You can make another.
Did you follow us all this way for nothing more than a knife? Let
me go and find him and I will bring it back to you."

La laughed a bitter laugh, for in her heart she knew that Tarzan's
sin was greater than the purloining of the sacrificial knife of
Opar; yet as she looked at him lying bound and helpless before her,
tears rose to her eyes so that she had to turn away to hide them;
but she remained inflexible in her determination to make him pay
in frightful suffering and in eventual death for daring to spurn
the love of La.

When the shelter was completed La had Tarzan transferred to it.
"All night I shall torture him," she muttered to her priests, "and
at the first streak of dawn you may prepare the flaming altar upon
which his heart shall be offered up to the Flaming God. Gather
wood well filled with pitch, lay it in the form and size of the
altar at Opar in the center of the clearing that the Flaming God
may look down upon our handiwork and be pleased."

During the balance of the day the priests of Opar were busy erecting
an altar in the center of the clearing, and while they worked they
chanted weird hymns in the ancient tongue of that lost continent
that lies at the bottom of the Atlantic. They knew not the meanings
of the words they mouthed; they but repeated the ritual that had