'Let the men go in peace, and when they have learnt our tongue then let them speak.

And I, even I, will make humble supplication at the altar lest pestilence fall on the land by cause of the sacrilege.' These words were received with a murmur of applause, and in another minute we were marching out of the temple surrounded by the royal guards.
But it was not till long afterwards that we learnt the exact substance of what had passed, and how hardly our lives had been wrung out of the cruel grip of the Zu-Vendi priesthood, in the face of which even the Queens were practically powerless.

Had it not been for their strenuous efforts to protect us we should have been slain even before we set foot in the Temple of the Sun.

The attempt to drop us bodily into the fiery pit as an offering was a last artifice to attain this end when several others quite unsuspected by us had already failed..