“I am a helpless free women,” said the free woman, wheedlingly, “and you are a free man. I have been insulted. I must depend upon you to see that my honor is suitable satisfied.”

“The barbarian slave will be suitably punished,” he said.

“Excellent!” she said.

The pit master, in spite of the power which he doubtless held in this place, even over prisoners, as I had been informed, seemed concerned to treat the free woman with respect. This, I gathered, might be cultural, or perhaps he, somehow, oddly, despite his grotesque appearance, might be sensitive to some subtle canons of gentility. I had noted that the guards in the pens had similarly shown great deference to free women. To be sure, those free women might have been important, and they were certainly not prisoners. This deference, it might be mentioned, had not precluded, later, and the next day, the women gone, a number of rude jokes pertaining to the, nor some rather explicit speculations as to what they might look like, chained naked to a floor ring. The respect commonly shown to free women on this world is not, of course, accorded to slaves. It would never have occurred to the pit master, or to other men of this world, to treat me as other than what I was, a slave. How different we are from free women! And yet, interestingly, how artificial, and how fragile, and how culturally precarious, is the distinction between the free women and the slave. Do the free women understand that that distinction is not part of nature, like dominance and submission, but that it depends merely on the will of men? Do they not understand that their lofty status requires the permission of males, and, in a sense, depends upon the whims of males? There is a thin line, and a short distance, between the free woman and the slave, a line as thin as slave silk, a distance as short as the three links joining slave bracelets.

“What of my ransom?” called the free woman. “Has it arrived?”

“No,” said the pit master.

“Surely it is overdue!” she cried, grasping the bars of the cage.

“I do not know,” said the pit master.

“Well, inquire!” she cried.

The pit master was silent. I did not think he was pleased. He removed his hand from my hair. Instantly I knelt, head down, near him.

“Inquire!” demanded the free woman. The pit master was silent.

“Expedite the matter!” she cried, shaking the bars. He was silent.

“Please, my handsome fellow,” she wheeled.

“Lift the torch, higher,” said the pit master, slowly, as though curious, to the lovely brunette slave beside him.

As none were paying me attention I dared to look up. Should the pit master turn to regard me I would instantly look down, and away. I did not wish to appear insolent, meeting his eyes. Too, I was not eager to behold again that visage.

The ceiling flickered wildly in the illumination of the torch.

Suddenly the pit master, that shambling creature, who had apparently been curious to look more closely upon something, uttered an angry noise.

The slave with the torch gasped.

She, too, it seemed, had noted something.

The free woman in the cage stepped back a little.

The pit master pointed toward the bottom of the cage. The cage, as the net had had, had various ropes attached to it. By these robes, I surmised, once it was lowered on its chain, perhaps by some sort of windlass, it might be drawn toward the walkway.

“What is wrong?” asked the free woman.

I gathered that she might, from her words, have some conception as to what might be wrong.

“Remove the cloth,” said he, “from the latch.”

“No!” she wept. “Please!”

But she obeyed. The cage, apparently, opened and closed from the bottom, gated by a hinged plate. She had tied something, probably a strip of cloth from the bottom of her robes, which were ragged now, in such a way as to prevent the release of the floor. A cord, coiled on the walkway, ran the latch. By drawing on this cord it seemed the latch could be released. She stood in the cage, over the water. In her hand was the piece of cloth.

The pit master reached to the cord which controlled the latch.

“Please, no!” she cried.

“How,” asked the pit master, “is a female prisoner who is a free woman to address her jailer?”

“As ‘sir’!” she cried.

“You seem, hitherto, to have omitted that courtesy,” he observed.

“’Sir,’ ‘sir,’ sir’!” she wept.

“You must understand,” he said, “that in this place you are mine.”

“Yes, sir!” she wept.

“Hold to the bars,” he said.

Desperately, weeping, she clung to them. I gathered that she might have experienced something of this sort before.

He jerked the cord and it sprang the latch, and the bottom plate of the cage, she screaming with terror, I, too, crying out in terror, dropped down, on its hinge. She slipped partly through the opening, and then scrambled back within the cage, clinging to the bars, her feet trying to find some purchase there.

The cloth she had held floated down to the water.

Instantly I heard a rushing, a stirring in the water, a turmoil there, and the ripping of cloth, and an angry squealing.

I could not see what was there.

The free woman was screaming.

I almost fainted.

The pit master then went to a wheel set in the wall and, turning it, bit by bit, foot by foot, lowered the cage toward the water.

“Sir, sir!” screamed the free woman, as the cage, foot by foot, descended.

“Show the slave the pool,” said the pit master.

“Up, slave, to the wall,” said the brunette with the torch.

I rose up. I could hardly stand, so frightened I was. I did not want to approach the wall too closely. I was afraid of falling. My hands were bound behind me. What if I should lose my balance? How could I protect myself?

“Closer!” said the brunette slave.

I came closer to the wall, looked, gasped, cried out in terror, and shrank back.

The free woman was hysterical in the cage.

“Look!” commanded the brunette slave.

I came forward, again, and looked. In the water, swirling about, were several dark, sleek shapes. I had never seen anything like them. They seemed like some form of rodent, but they were far too large. They were not like the six-legged creatures. I had seen before, that on the ledge, that on the surface of the tower.

“Urts,” said the female slave with the torch.

I saw some of these things now, their fur wet, their ears back against the sides of their heads, leaping upward, trying to reach the cage.

Then the cage stopped descending.

The free woman tried to draw herself higher into the cage.

I could see in the torchlight, a moment before it broke the surface, one of the beasts, swimming rapidly upward from it, erupting from it, and I saw its full body, shedding water, its neck extended, its jaws open, its forepaws down against its body, streamlining its shape, its hind legs extended, it leaping upward, then yards above the surface of the torn, dark pool, and then it seemed to pause in the air, and then, snarling, just short of the cage, it dropped back into the pool. Water splashed up. It drenched the cage, the feet of the free woman. I felt it even on my body, where I stood. Other beasts, too, now essayed the leap. They, gathering force, swimming swiftly in ever widening, preparatory circles just under the water, would plunge down, yards from the cage, and then ascend rapidly, spearing upward, snapping, from the water. Then, in rage, in frustration, they would drop back in the water. Closer and closer they came. The brunette slave held the torch back that its flame might not be extinguished by the drenching water. One of the beasts caught a bottom circling bar of iron in its teeth. It swung for a moment from the cage. Its forepaws fought for purchase at the cage, but the claws scratched futilely on the dangling solid gate, forcing it back on its hinges. The free woman screamed. It snapped at the free woman, in this action losing its hold on the cage. Again she screamed, the thing just below her. Then, snarling and squealing, it fell back into the water. Its jaws had been no more than inches from the feet of the free woman. Another beast leaped upward, falling just short of her, its snout actually within the opened cage. Some beasts did not leap upward but remained patiently, tensely quiescent in the wide circle in the water, a circle ranging about the cage. They lay there, almost flat in the water, mostly submerged.