"If you can dissolve all our obstacles as easily as you master these fierce brutes I can see no difficulties in our way,"
I said to the girl, smiling. "How do you do it?"
She laughed, and then shuddered.
"I do not quite know," she said. "When first I came here I angered Sator Throg, because I repulsed him. He ordered me to be thrown into one of the great pits in the inner gardens.
It was filled with banths. In my own country I had been accustomed to command. Something in my voice, I do not know what, cowed the beasts as they sprang to attack me.
"Instead of tearing me to pieces, as Sator Throg had desired, they fawned at my feet. So greatly were Sator Throg and his friends amused by the sight that they kept me to train and handle the terrible creatures. I know them all by name.
There are many of them wandering through these lower regions.
They are the scavengers. Many prisoners die here in their chains.
The banths solve the problem of sanitation, at least in this respect.
"In the gardens and temples above they are kept in pits.
The therns fear them. It is because of the banths that they seldom venture below ground except as their duties call them."