"Shhh!"
And then Tharn began to gnaw at Trakor's bonds. His strong sharp teeth bit into those tough green vines, filling his mouth with an unpleasant taste. It was slow, jaw-tiring work and the vines were many, stringy and reluctant to part. But the cave lord's indomitable patience and perseverance were not to be denied.
At long last Trakor was able to free his hands. He winced as blood began to move again in his veins and minutes passed before he was able to control his hands. His questing fingers found the knots holding Tharn helpless and very soon both men were free to act.
Still lying side by side, Tharn began to whisper instructions. Twice one of the sleeping spider-men stirred and the two Cro-Magnards held their breaths until he had quieted.
When Trakor nodded to indicate Tharn's plan was clear to him, the cave lord rose to his feet and, like a shadowy wraith, moved to the nearest wall. This was a tense moment in the execution of his plan; its entire success depended on how substantial that wall would prove to be.
A brief examination by the means of touch alone told him the hut was constructed by first forming a cage-like skeleton of fairly thick but pliable boughs, then interlacing the openings with grass. The horizontal "beams" were roughly three feet apart; the roof, as Tharn had earlier been careful to gauge, was something like fifteen feet above the floor at its highest point.
Tharn's original plan had been to force an opening in one of these walls large enough for Trakor and him to wriggle through into the open air. But his ears and nose told him that this hut was practically ringed with patrolling sentries, several of which were perched among branches directly above the hut itself. The minute he and Trakor appeared outside they would be buried under an avalanche of spider-men.
But there was another way—a way daring and imaginative and infinitely dangerous. But in its daring lay the very chances for its success—while danger was so common a phenomenon in jungle life as to rouse little more than indifference among its dwellers.
Using the relatively sturdy skeletal branches foot—and hand—holds Tharn began to climb up that rounded wall. After some eight feet of this the inner side of the conical roof began and the cave lord was hard pressed to cling to the inward sloping surface.