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THE WARLORD OFMARS

Edgar Rice Burroughs

This public-domain (U.S.) text was typedby Judy Boss, and proofread by CharlesKeller. The Project Gutenberg edition(“wmars12”) was converted to LATEX usingGutenMark software and re-edited (format-ting only) by Ron Burkey. Report problems [email protected]. Revision B1 differs fromrevision B, in that all “—-” have been cor-rected to “—”

Revision: B1Date: 01/27/2008

Contents

ON THE RIVER ISS 1

UNDER THE MOUNTAINS 17

THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN 33

THE SECRET TOWER 47

ON THE KAOLIAN ROAD 63

A HERO IN KAOL 81

NEW ALLIES 95

THROUGH THE CARRION CAVES 111

WITH THE YELLOW MEN 127

IN DURANCE 141

THE PIT OF PLENTY 155

THE MAGNET SWITCH 183

THE TIDE OF BATTLE 199

REWARDS 211

i

ii

THE NEW RULER 225

ON THE RIVERISS

In the shadows of the forest that flanks thecrimson plain by the side of the Lost Sea ofKorus in the Valley Dor, beneath the hurtlingmoons of Mars, speeding their meteoric wayclose above the bosom of the dying planet, Icrept stealthily along the trail of a shadowyform that hugged the darker places with apersistency that proclaimed the sinister na-ture of its errand.

For six long Martian months I had hauntedthe vicinity of the hateful Temple of the Sun,within whose slow-revolving shaft, far be-neath the surface of Mars, my princess layentombed—but whether alive or dead I knewnot. Had Phaidor’s slim blade found thatbeloved heart? Time only would reveal thetruth.

Six hundred and eighty-seven Martiandays must come and go before the cell’s doorwould again come opposite the tunnel’s endwhere last I had seen my ever-beautiful De-jah Thoris.

Half of them had passed, or would on the

1

2 THE WARLORD OF MARS

morrow, yet vivid in my memory, obliterat-ing every event that had come before or after,there remained the last scene before the gustof smoke blinded my eyes and the narrow slitthat had given me sight of the interior of hercell closed between me and the Princess of He-lium for a long Martian year.

As if it were yesterday, I still saw the beau-tiful face of Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang,distorted with jealous rage and hatred as shesprang forward with raised dagger upon thewoman I loved.

I saw the red girl, Thuvia of Ptarth, leapforward to prevent the hideous deed.

The smoke from the burning temple hadcome then to blot out the tragedy, but inmy ears rang the single shriek as the knifefell. Then silence, and when the smoke hadcleared, the revolving temple had shut off allsight or sound from the chamber in which thethree beautiful women were imprisoned.

Much there had been to occupy my atten-tion since that terrible moment; but never foran instant had the memory of the thing faded,and all the time that I could spare from thenumerous duties that had devolved upon mein the reconstruction of the government of theFirst Born since our victorious fleet and landforces had overwhelmed them, had been spentclose to the grim shaft that held the mother ofmy boy, Carthoris of Helium.

The race of blacks that for ages had wor-shiped Issus, the false deity of Mars, had beenleft in a state of chaos by my revealment of heras naught more than a wicked old woman. In

ON THE RIVER ISS 3

their rage they had torn her to pieces.From the high pinnacle of their egotism

the First Born had been plunged to the depthsof humiliation. Their deity was gone, and withher the whole false fabric of their religion.Their vaunted navy had fallen in defeat beforethe superior ships and fighting men of the redmen of Helium.

Fierce green warriors from the ocher seabottoms of outer Mars had ridden their wildthoats across the sacred gardens of the Tem-ple of Issus, and Tars Tarkas, Jeddak ofThark, fiercest of them all, had sat upon thethrone of Issus and ruled the First Born whilethe allies were deciding the conquered na-tion’s fate.

Almost unanimous was the request that Iascend the ancient throne of the black men,even the First Born themselves concurring init; but I would have none of it. My heart couldnever be with the race that had heaped indig-nities upon my princess and my son.

At my suggestion Xodar became Jeddak ofthe First Born. He had been a dator, or prince,until Issus had degraded him, so that his fit-ness for the high office bestowed was unques-tioned.

The peace of the Valley Dor thus assured,the green warriors dispersed to their desolatesea bottoms, while we of Helium returned toour own country. Here again was a throneoffered me, since no word had been receivedfrom the missing Jeddak of Helium, TardosMors, grandfather of Dejah Thoris, or his son,Mors Kajak, Jed of Helium, her father.


Over a year had elapsed since they hadset out to explore the northern hemisphere insearch of Carthoris, and at last their disheart-ened people had accepted as truth the vaguerumors of their death that had filtered in fromthe frozen region of the pole.

Once again I refused a throne, for I wouldnot believe that the mighty Tardos Mors, orhis no less redoubtable son, was dead.

“Let one of their own blood rule you un-til they return,” I said to the assembled no-bles of Helium, as I addressed them from thePedestal of Truth beside the Throne of Righ-teousness in the Temple of Reward, from thevery spot where I had stood a year beforewhen Zat Arras pronounced the sentence ofdeath upon me.

As I spoke I stepped forward and laid myhand upon the shoulder of Carthoris where hestood in the front rank of the circle of noblesabout me.

As one, the nobles and the people liftedtheir voices in a long cheer of approbation.Ten thousand swords sprang on high fromas many scabbards, and the glorious fightingmen of ancient Helium hailed Carthoris Jed-dak of Helium.

His tenure of office was to be for life oruntil his great-grandfather, or grandfather,should return. Having thus satisfactorilyarranged this important duty for Helium, Istarted the following day for the Valley Dorthat I might remain close to the Temple of theSun until the fateful day that should see theopening of the prison cell where my lost love

ON THE RIVER ISS 5

lay buried.Hor Vastus and Kantos Kan, with my

other noble lieutenants, I left with Carthorisat Helium, that he might have the benefit oftheir wisdom, bravery, and loyalty in the per-formance of the arduous duties which had de-volved upon him. Only Woola, my Martianhound, accompanied me.

At my heels tonight the faithful beastmoved softly in my tracks. As large as a Shet-land pony, with hideous head and frightfulfangs, he was indeed an awesome spectacle,as he crept after me on his ten short, muscu-lar legs; but to me he was the embodiment oflove and loyalty.

The figure ahead was that of the black da-tor of the First Born, Thurid, whose undyingenmity I had earned that time I laid him lowwith my bare hands in the courtyard of theTemple of Issus, and bound him with his ownharness before the noble men and women whohad but a moment before been extolling hisprowess.

Like many of his fellows, he had appar-ently accepted the new order of things withgood grace, and had sworn fealty to Xodar, hisnew ruler; but I knew that he hated me, and Iwas sure that in his heart he envied and hatedXodar, so I had kept a watch upon his com-ings and goings, to the end that of late I hadbecome convinced that he was occupied withsome manner of intrigue.

Several times I had observed him leavingthe walled city of the First Born after dark,taking his way out into the cruel and horri-


ble Valley Dor, where no honest business couldlead any man.

Tonight he moved quickly along the edgeof the forest until well beyond sight or soundof the city, then he turned across the crimsonsward toward the shore of the Lost Sea of Ko-rus.

The rays of the nearer moon, swinging lowacross the valley, touched his jewel-incrustedharness with a thousand changing lights andglanced from the glossy ebony of his smoothhide. Twice he turned his head back towardthe forest, after the manner of one who is uponan evil errand, though he must have felt quitesafe from pursuit.

I did not dare follow him there beneath themoonlight, since it best suited my plans not tointerrupt his—I wished him to reach his des-tination unsuspecting, that I might learn justwhere that destination lay and the businessthat awaited the night prowler there.

So it was that I remained hidden until af-ter Thurid had disappeared over the edge ofthe steep bank beside the sea a quarter of amile away. Then, with Woola following, I has-tened across the open after the black dator.

The quiet of the tomb lay upon the mys-terious valley of death, crouching deep in itswarm nest within the sunken area at thesouth pole of the dying planet. In the far dis-tance the Golden Cliffs raised their mightybarrier faces far into the starlit heavens, theprecious metals and scintillating jewels thatcomposed them sparkling in the brilliant lightof Mars’s two gorgeous moons.

ON THE RIVER ISS 7

At my back was the forest, pruned andtrimmed like the sward to parklike symmetryby the browsing of the ghoulish plant men.

Before me lay the Lost Sea of Korus, whilefarther on I caught the shimmering ribbon ofIss, the River of Mystery, where it wound outfrom beneath the Golden Cliffs to empty intoKorus, to which for countless ages had beenborne the deluded and unhappy Martians ofthe outer world upon the voluntary pilgrim-age to this false heaven.

The plant men, with their blood-suckinghands, and the monstrous white apes thatmake Dor hideous by day, were hidden in theirlairs for the night.

There was no longer a Holy Thern upon thebalcony in the Golden Cliffs above the Iss tosummon them with weird cry to the victimsfloating down to their maws upon the cold,broad bosom of ancient Iss.

The navies of Helium and the First Bornhad cleared the fortresses and the templesof the therns when they had refused to sur-render and accept the new order of thingsthat had swept their false religion from long-suffering Mars.

In a few isolated countries they still re-tained their age-old power; but Matai Shang,their hekkador, Father of Therns, had beendriven from his temple. Strenuous had beenour endeavors to capture him; but with a fewof the faithful he had escaped, and was inhiding—where we knew not.

As I came cautiously to the edge of thelow cliff overlooking the Lost Sea of Korus I


saw Thurid pushing out upon the bosom ofthe shimmering water in a small skiff—one ofthose strangely wrought craft of unthinkableage which the Holy Therns, with their organi-zation of priests and lesser therns, were wontto distribute along the banks of the Iss, thatthe long journey of their victims might be fa-cilitated.

Drawn up on the beach below me were ascore of similar boats, each with its long pole,at one end of which was a pike, at the other apaddle. Thurid was hugging the shore, andas he passed out of sight round a near-bypromontory I shoved one of the boats into thewater and, calling Woola into it, pushed outfrom shore.

The pursuit of Thurid carried me alongthe edge of the sea toward the mouth of theIss. The farther moon lay close to the horizon,casting a dense shadow beneath the cliffs thatfringed the water. Thuria, the nearer moon,had set, nor would it rise again for near fourhours, so that I was ensured concealing dark-ness for that length of time at least.

On and on went the black warrior. Nowhe was opposite the mouth of the Iss. With-out an instant’s hesitation he turned up thegrim river, paddling hard against the strongcurrent.

After him came Woola and I, closer now,for the man was too intent upon forcing hiscraft up the river to have any eyes for whatmight be transpiring behind him. He huggedthe shore where the current was less strong.

Presently he came to the dark cavernous

ON THE RIVER ISS 9

portal in the face of the Golden Cliffs, throughwhich the river poured. On into the Stygiandarkness beyond he urged his craft.

It seemed hopeless to attempt to followhim here where I could not see my hand be-fore my face, and I was almost on the point ofgiving up the pursuit and drifting back to themouth of the river, there to await his return,when a sudden bend showed a faint luminos-ity ahead.

My quarry was plainly visible again, andin the increasing light from the phosphores-cent rock that lay embedded in great patchesin the roughly arched roof of the cavern I hadno difficulty in following him.

It was my first trip upon the bosom of Iss,and the things I saw there will live forever inmy memory.

Terrible as they were, they could not havecommenced to approximate the horrible con-ditions which must have obtained before TarsTarkas, the great green warrior, Xodar, theblack dator, and I brought the light of truthto the outer world and stopped the mad rushof millions upon the voluntary pilgrimage towhat they believed would end in a beautifulvalley of peace and happiness and love.

Even now the low islands which dottedthe broad stream were choked with the skele-tons and half devoured carcasses of those who,through fear or a sudden awakening to thetruth, had halted almost at the completion oftheir journey.

In the awful stench of these frightful char-nel isles haggard maniacs screamed and gib-


bered and fought among the torn remnantsof their grisly feasts; while on those whichcontained but clean-picked bones they bat-tled with one another, the weaker furnish-ing sustenance for the stronger; or with claw-like hands clutched at the bloated bodies thatdrifted down with the current.

Thurid paid not the slightest attention tothe screaming things that either menacedor pleaded with him as the mood directedthem—evidently he was familiar with the hor-rid sights that surrounded him. He contin-ued up the river for perhaps a mile; and then,crossing over to the left bank, drew his craftup on a low ledge that lay almost on a levelwith the water.

I dared not follow across the stream, forhe most surely would have seen me. InsteadI stopped close to the opposite wall beneathan overhanging mass of rock that cast a denseshadow beneath it. Here I could watch Thuridwithout danger of discovery.

The black was standing upon the ledge be-side his boat, looking up the river, as thoughhe were awaiting one whom he expected fromthat direction.

As I lay there beneath the dark rocks I no-ticed that a strong current seemed to flow di-rectly toward the center of the river, so thatit was difficult to hold my craft in its posi-tion. I edged farther into the shadow that Imight find a hold upon the bank; but, thoughI proceeded several yards, I touched nothing;and then, finding that I would soon reach apoint from where I could no longer see the

ON THE RIVER ISS 11

black man, I was compelled to remain whereI was, holding my position as best I could bypaddling strongly against the current whichflowed from beneath the rocky mass behindme.

I could not imagine what might cause thisstrong lateral flow, for the main channel ofthe river was plainly visible to me from whereI sat, and I could see the rippling junctionof it and the mysterious current which hadaroused my curiosity.

While I was still speculating upon the phe-nomenon, my attention was suddenly rivetedupon Thurid, who had raised both palms for-ward above his head in the universal salute ofMartians, and a moment later his “Kaor!” theBarsoomian word of greeting, came in low butdistinct tones.

I turned my eyes up the river in the direc-tion that his were bent, and presently therecame within my limited range of vision a longboat, in which were six men. Five were atthe paddles, while the sixth sat in the seat ofhonor.

The white skins, the flowing yellow wigswhich covered their bald pates, and the gor-geous diadems set in circlets of gold abouttheir heads marked them as Holy Therns.

As they drew up beside the ledge uponwhich Thurid awaited them, he in the bow ofthe boat arose to step ashore, and then I sawthat it was none other than Matai Shang, Fa-ther of Therns.

The evident cordiality with which the twomen exchanged greetings filled me with won-


der, for the black and white men of Barsoomwere hereditary enemies—nor ever before hadI known of two meeting other than in battle.

Evidently the reverses that had recentlyovertaken both peoples had resulted in analliance between these two individuals—atleast against the common enemy—and now Isaw why Thurid had come so often out intothe Valley Dor by night, and that the natureof his conspiring might be such as to strikevery close to me or to my friends.

I wished that I might have found a pointcloser to the two men from which to haveheard their conversation; but it was out ofthe question now to attempt to cross the river,and so I lay quietly watching them, who wouldhave given so much to have known how closeI lay to them, and how easily they might haveovercome and killed me with their superiorforce.

Several times Thurid pointed across theriver in my direction, but that his gestureshad any reference to me I did not for a mo-ment believe. Presently he and Matai Shangentered the latter’s boat, which turned outinto the river and, swinging round, forgedsteadily across in my direction.

As they advanced I moved my boat fartherand farther in beneath the overhanging wall,but at last it became evident that their craftwas holding the same course. The five pad-dlers sent the larger boat ahead at a speedthat taxed my energies to equal.

Every instant I expected to feel my prowcrash against solid rock. The light from the

ON THE RIVER ISS 13

river was no longer visible, but ahead I sawthe faint tinge of a distant radiance, and stillthe water before me was open.

At last the truth dawned upon me—I wasfollowing a subterranean river which emptiedinto the Iss at the very point where I had hid-den.

The rowers were now quite close to me.The noise of their own paddles drowned thesound of mine, but in another instant thegrowing light ahead would reveal me to them.

There was no time to be lost. Whateveraction I was to take must be taken at once.Swinging the prow of my boat toward theright, I sought the river’s rocky side, andthere I lay while Matai Shang and Thurid ap-proached up the center of the stream, whichwas much narrower than the Iss.

As they came nearer I heard the voices ofThurid and the Father of Therns raised in ar-gument.

“I tell you, Thern,” the black dator was say-ing, “that I wish only vengeance upon JohnCarter, Prince of Helium. I am leading youinto no trap. What could I gain by betrayingyou to those who have ruined my nation andmy house?”

“Let us stop here a moment that I mayhear your plans,” replied the hekkador, “andthen we may proceed with a better under-standing of our duties and obligations.”

To the rowers he issued the command thatbrought their boat in toward the bank not adozen paces beyond the spot where I lay.

Had they pulled in below me they must


surely have seen me against the faint glowof light ahead, but from where they finallycame to rest I was as secure from detectionas though miles separated us.

The few words I had already overheardwhetted my curiosity, and I was anxious tolearn what manner of vengeance Thurid wasplanning against me. Nor had I long to wait.I listened intently.

“There are no obligations, Father of Th-erns,” continued the First Born. “Thurid, Da-tor of Issus, has no price. When the thing hasbeen accomplished I shall be glad if you willsee to it that I am well received, as is befittingmy ancient lineage and noble rank, at somecourt that is yet loyal to thy ancient faith, forI cannot return to the Valley Dor or elsewherewithin the power of the Prince of Helium; buteven that I do not demand—it shall be as yourown desire in the matter directs.”

“It shall be as you wish, Dator,” repliedMatai Shang; “nor is that all—power andriches shall be yours if you restore my daugh-ter, Phaidor, to me, and place within my powerDejah Thoris, Princess of Helium.

“Ah,” he continued with a malicious snarl,“but the Earth man shall suffer for the indig-nities he has put upon the holy of holies, norshall any vileness be too vile to inflict uponhis princess. Would that it were in my powerto force him to witness the humiliation anddegradation of the red woman.”

“You shall have your way with her beforeanother day has passed, Matai Shang,” saidThurid, “if you but say the word.”

ON THE RIVER ISS 15

“I have heard of the Temple of the Sun,Dator,” replied Matai Shang, “but never haveI heard that its prisoners could be releasedbefore the allotted year of their incarcerationhad elapsed. How, then, may you accomplishthe impossible?”

“Access may be had to any cell of the tem-ple at any time,” replied Thurid. “Only Issusknew this; nor was it ever Issus’ way to di-vulge more of her secrets than were necessary.By chance, after her death, I came upon anancient plan of the temple, and there I found,plainly writ, the most minute directions forreaching the cells at any time.

“And more I learned—that many men hadgone thither for Issus in the past, always onerrands of death and torture to the prison-ers; but those who thus learned the secret waywere wont to die mysteriously immediatelythey had returned and made their reports tocruel Issus.”

“Let us proceed, then,” said Matai Shangat last. “I must trust you, yet at the same timeyou must trust me, for we are six to your one.”

“I do not fear,” replied Thurid, “nor needyou. Our hatred of the common enemy issufficient bond to insure our loyalty to eachother, and after we have defiled the Princessof Helium there will be still greater reason forthe maintenance of our allegiance—unless Igreatly mistake the temper of her lord.”

Matai Shang spoke to the paddlers. Theboat moved on up the tributary.

It was with difficulty that I restrained my-self from rushing upon them and slaying the


two vile plotters; but quickly I saw the madrashness of such an act, which would cut downthe only man who could lead the way to DejahThoris’ prison before the long Martian yearhad swung its interminable circle.

If he should lead Matai Shang to that hol-lowed spot, then, too, should he lead JohnCarter, Prince of Helium.

With silent paddle I swung slowly into thewake of the larger craft.

UNDER THEMOUNTAINS

As we advanced up the river which winds be-neath the Golden Cliffs out of the bowels ofthe Mountains of Otz to mingle its dark wa-ters with the grim and mysterious Iss thefaint glow which had appeared before us grewgradually into an all-enveloping radiance.

The river widened until it presented theaspect of a large lake whose vaulted dome,lighted by glowing phosphorescent rock, wassplashed with the vivid rays of the diamond,the sapphire, the ruby, and the countless,nameless jewels of Barsoom which lay in-crusted in the virgin gold which forms the ma-jor portion of these magnificent cliffs.

Beyond the lighted chamber of the lakewas darkness—what lay behind the darknessI could not even guess.

To have followed the thern boat across thegleaming water would have been to invite in-stant detection, and so, though I was loathto permit Thurid to pass even for an instantbeyond my sight, I was forced to wait in theshadows until the other boat had passed from

17


my sight at the far extremity of the lake.Then I paddled out upon the brilliant sur-

face in the direction they had taken.When, after what seemed an eternity, I

reached the shadows at the upper end of thelake I found that the river issued from a lowaperture, to pass beneath which it was neces-sary that I compel Woola to lie flat in the boat,and I, myself, must need bend double beforethe low roof cleared my head.

Immediately the roof rose again upon theother side, but no longer was the way bril-liantly lighted. Instead only a feeble glow em-anated from small and scattered patches ofphosphorescent rock in wall and roof.

Directly before me the river ran intothis smaller chamber through three separatearched openings.

Thurid and the therns were nowhere to beseen—into which of the dark holes had theydisappeared? There was no means by whichI might know, and so I chose the center open-ing as being as likely to lead me in the rightdirection as another.

Here the way was through utter darkness.The stream was narrow—so narrow that inthe blackness I was constantly bumping firstone rock wall and then another as the riverwound hither and thither along its flinty bed.

Far ahead I presently heard a deep andsullen roar which increased in volume as I ad-vanced, and then broke upon my ears with allthe intensity of its mad fury as I swung rounda sharp curve into a dimly lighted stretch ofwater.


Directly before me the river thundereddown from above in a mighty waterfall thatfilled the narrow gorge from side to side, ris-ing far above me several hundred feet—asmagnificent a spectacle as I ever had seen.

But the roar—the awful, deafening roar ofthose tumbling waters penned in the rocky,subterranean vault! Had the fall not entirelyblocked my further passage and shown methat I had followed the wrong course I be-lieve that I should have fled anyway before themaddening tumult.

Thurid and the therns could not have comethis way. By stumbling upon the wrong courseI had lost the trail, and they had gained somuch ahead of me that now I might not beable to find them before it was too late, if, infact, I could find them at all.

It had taken several hours to force my wayup to the falls against the strong current, andother hours would be required for the descent,although the pace would be much swifter.

With a sigh I turned the prow of my craftdown stream, and with mighty strokes has-tened with reckless speed through the darkand tortuous channel until once again I cameto the chamber into which flowed the threebranches of the river.

Two unexplored channels still remainedfrom which to choose; nor was there anymeans by which I could judge which was themore likely to lead me to the plotters.

Never in my life, that I can recall, have Isuffered such an agony of indecision. So muchdepended upon a correct choice; so much de-


pended upon haste.The hours that I had already lost might

seal the fate of the incomparable Dejah Thoriswere she not already dead—to sacrifice otherhours, and maybe days in a fruitless explo-ration of another blind lead would unques-tionably prove fatal.

Several times I essayed the right-hand en-trance only to turn back as though warnedby some strange intuitive sense that this wasnot the way. At last, convinced by the oft-recurring phenomenon, I cast my all upon theleft-hand archway; yet it was with a linger-ing doubt that I turned a parting look at thesullen waters which rolled, dark and forbid-ding, from beneath the grim, low archway onthe right.

And as I looked there came bobbing outupon the current from the Stygian darkness ofthe interior the shell of one of the great, suc-culent fruits of the sorapus tree.

I could scarce restrain a shout of elation asthis silent, insensate messenger floated pastme, on toward the Iss and Korus, for it toldme that journeying Martians were above meon that very stream.

They had eaten of this marvelous fruitwhich nature concentrates within the hardshell of the sorapus nut, and having eaten hadcast the husk overboard. It could have comefrom no others than the party I sought.

Quickly I abandoned all thought of the left-hand passage, and a moment later had turnedinto the right. The stream soon widened,and recurring areas of phosphorescent rock


lighted my way.I made good time, but was convinced that I

was nearly a day behind those I was tracking.Neither Woola nor I had eaten since the pre-vious day, but in so far as he was concernedit mattered but little, since practically all theanimals of the dead sea bottoms of Mars areable to go for incredible periods without nour-ishment.

Nor did I suffer. The water of the river wassweet and cold, for it was unpolluted by de-caying bodies—like the Iss—and as for food,why the mere thought that I was nearing mybeloved princess raised me above every mate-rial want.

As I proceeded, the river became narrowerand the current swift and turbulent—-so swiftin fact that it was with difficulty that I forcedmy craft upward at all. I could not have beenmaking to exceed a hundred yards an hourwhen, at a bend, I was confronted by a seriesof rapids through which the river foamed andboiled at a terrific rate.

My heart sank within me. The sorapusnutshell had proved a false prophet, and, afterall, my intuition had been correct—it was theleft-hand channel that I should have followed.

Had I been a woman I should have wept.At my right was a great, slow-moving eddythat circled far beneath the cliff ’s overhang-ing side, and to rest my tired muscles beforeturning back I let my boat drift into its em-brace.

I was almost prostrated by disappoint-ment. It would mean another half-day’s loss


of time to retrace my way and take the onlypassage that yet remained unexplored. Whathellish fate had led me to select from threepossible avenues the two that were wrong?

As the lazy current of the eddy carriedme slowly about the periphery of the waterycircle my boat twice touched the rocky sideof the river in the dark recess beneath thecliff. A third time it struck, gently as it hadbefore, but the contact resulted in a differ-ent sound—the sound of wood scraping uponwood.

In an instant I was on the alert, for therecould be no wood within that buried river thathad not been man brought. Almost coinciden-tally with my first apprehension of the noise,my hand shot out across the boat’s side, anda second later I felt my fingers gripping thegunwale of another craft.

As though turned to stone I sat in tenseand rigid silence, straining my eyes into theutter darkness before me in an effort to dis-cover if the boat were occupied.

It was entirely possible that there mightbe men on board it who were still ignorant ofmy presence, for the boat was scraping gentlyagainst the rocks upon one side, so that thegentle touch of my boat upon the other easilycould have gone unnoticed.

Peer as I would I could not penetrate thedarkness, and then I listened intently for thesound of breathing near me; but except for thenoise of the rapids, the soft scraping of theboats, and the lapping of the water at theirsides I could distinguish no sound. As usual, I


thought rapidly.A rope lay coiled in the bottom of my own

craft. Very softly I gathered it up, and makingone end fast to the bronze ring in the prow Istepped gingerly into the boat beside me. Inone hand I grasped the rope, in the other mykeen long-sword.

For a full minute, perhaps, I stood motion-less after entering the strange craft. It hadrocked a trifle beneath my weight, but it hadbeen the scraping of its side against the sideof my own boat that had seemed most likelyto alarm its occupants, if there were any.

But there was no answering sound, and amoment later I had felt from stem to stern andfound the boat deserted.

Groping with my hands along the face ofthe rocks to which the craft was moored, I dis-covered a narrow ledge which I knew must bethe avenue taken by those who had come be-fore me. That they could be none other thanThurid and his party I was convinced by thesize and build of the boat I had found.

Calling to Woola to follow me I stepped outupon the ledge. The great, savage brute, agileas a cat, crept after me.

As he passed through the boat that hadbeen occupied by Thurid and the therns heemitted a single low growl, and when he camebeside me upon the ledge and my hand restedupon his neck I felt his short mane bristlingwith anger. I think he sensed telepathicallythe recent presence of an enemy, for I hadmade no effort to impart to him the nature ofour quest or the status of those we tracked.


This omission I now made haste to correct,and, after the manner of green Martians withtheir beasts, I let him know partially by theweird and uncanny telepathy of Barsoom andpartly by word of mouth that we were uponthe trail of those who had recently occupiedthe boat through which we had just passed.

A soft purr, like that of a great cat, indi-cated that Woola understood, and then, witha word to him to follow, I turned to the rightalong the ledge, but scarcely had I done sothan I felt his mighty fangs tugging at myleathern harness.

As I turned to discover the cause of his acthe continued to pull me steadily in the oppo-site direction, nor would he desist until I hadturned about and indicated that I would fol-low him voluntarily.

Never had I known him to be in error in amatter of tracking, so it was with a feeling ofentire security that I moved cautiously in thehuge beast’s wake. Through Cimmerian dark-ness he moved along the narrow ledge besidethe boiling rapids.

As we advanced, the way led from beneaththe overhanging cliffs out into a dim light, andthen it was that I saw that the trail had beencut from the living rock, and that it ran upalong the river’s side beyond the rapids.

For hours we followed the dark and gloomyriver farther and farther into the bowels ofMars. From the direction and distance I knewthat we must be well beneath the Valley Dor,and possibly beneath the Sea of Omean aswell—it could not be much farther now to the


Temple of the Sun.Even as my mind framed the thought,

Woola halted suddenly before a narrow,arched doorway in the cliff by the trail’s side.Quickly he crouched back away from the en-trance, at the same time turning his eyes to-ward me.

Words could not have more plainly told methat danger of some sort lay near by, and so Ipressed quietly forward to his side, and pass-ing him looked into the aperture at our right.

Before me was a fair-sized chamber that,from its appointments, I knew must have atone time been a guardroom. There were racksfor weapons, and slightly raised platforms forthe sleeping silks and furs of the warriors, butnow its only occupants were two of the thernswho had been of the party with Thurid andMatai Shang.

The men were in earnest conversation, andfrom their tones it was apparent that theywere entirely unaware that they had listen-ers.

“I tell you,” one of them was saying, “Ido not trust the black one. There was nonecessity for leaving us here to guard theway. Against what, pray, should we guard thislong-forgotten, abysmal path? It was but aruse to divide our numbers.

“He will have Matai Shang leave otherselsewhere on some pretext or other, and thenat last he will fall upon us with his confeder-ates and slay us all.”

“I believe you, Lakor,” replied the other,“there can never be aught else than deadly


hatred between thern and First Born. Andwhat think you of the ridiculous matter of thelight? ‘Let the light shine with the intensityof three radium units for fifty tals, and for onexat let it shine with the intensity of one ra-dium unit, and then for twenty-five tals withnine units.’ Those were his very words, and tothink that wise old Matai Shang should listento such foolishness.”

“Indeed, it is silly,” replied Lakor. “It willopen nothing other than the way to a quickdeath for us all. He had to make some answerwhen Matai Shang asked him flatly what heshould do when he came to the Temple of theSun, and so he made his answer quickly fromhis imagination—I would wager a hekkador’sdiadem that he could not now repeat it him-self.”

“Let us not remain here longer, Lakor,”spoke the other thern. “Perchance if we has-ten after them we may come in time to rescueMatai Shang, and wreak our own vengeanceupon the black dator. What say you?”

“Never in a long life,” answered Lakor,“have I disobeyed a single command of the Fa-ther of Therns. I shall stay here until I rot ifhe does not return to bid me elsewhere.”

Lakor’s companion shook his head.“You are my superior,” he said; “I cannot do

other than you sanction, though I still believethat we are foolish to remain.”

I, too, thought that they were foolish toremain, for I saw from Woola’s actions thatthe trail led through the room where the twotherns held guard. I had no reason to har-


bor any considerable love for this race of self-deified demons, yet I would have passed themby were it possible without molesting them.

It was worth trying anyway, for a fightmight delay us considerably, or even put anend entirely to my search—better men thanI have gone down before fighters of meanerability than that possessed by the fierce thernwarriors.

Signaling Woola to heel I stepped suddenlyinto the room before the two men. At sight ofme their long-swords flashed from the harnessat their sides, but I raised my hand in a ges-ture of restraint.

“I seek Thurid, the black dator,” I said. “Myquarrel is with him, not with you. Let mepass then in peace, for if I mistake not he is asmuch your enemy as mine, and you can haveno cause to protect him.”

They lowered their swords and Lakorspoke.

“I know not whom you may be, with thewhite skin of a thern and the black hair of ared man; but were it only Thurid whose safetywere at stake you might pass, and welcome, inso far as we be concerned.

“Tell us who you be, and what mission callsyou to this unknown world beneath the ValleyDor, then maybe we can see our way to let youpass upon the errand which we should like toundertake would our orders permit.”

I was surprised that neither of them hadrecognized me, for I thought that I was quitesufficiently well known either by personal ex-perience or reputation to every thern upon


Barsoom as to make my identity immediatelyapparent in any part of the planet. In fact, Iwas the only white man upon Mars whose hairwas black and whose eyes were gray, with theexception of my son, Carthoris.

To reveal my identity might be to precipi-tate an attack, for every thern upon Barsoomknew that to me they owed the fall of theirage-old spiritual supremacy. On the otherhand my reputation as a fighting man mightbe sufficient to pass me by these two weretheir livers not of the right complexion to wel-come a battle to the death.

To be quite candid I did not attempt to de-lude myself with any such sophistry, since Iknew well that upon war-like Mars there arefew cowards, and that every man, whetherprince, priest, or peasant, glories in deadlystrife. And so I gripped my long-sword thetighter as I replied to Lakor.

“I believe that you will see the wisdom ofpermitting me to pass unmolested,” I said, “forit would avail you nothing to die uselessly inthe rocky bowels of Barsoom merely to protecta hereditary enemy, such as Thurid, Dator ofthe First Born.

“That you shall die should you elect to op-pose me is evidenced by the moldering corpsesof all the many great Barsoomian warriorswho have gone down beneath this blade—I amJohn Carter, Prince of Helium.”

For a moment that name seemed to para-lyze the two men; but only for a moment, andthen the younger of them, with a vile nameupon his lips, rushed toward me with ready


sword.He had been standing a little behind his

companion, Lakor, during our parley, andnow, ere he could engage me, the older mangrasped his harness and drew him back.

“Hold!” commanded Lakor. “There will beplenty of time to fight if we find it wise to fightat all. There be good reasons why every th-ern upon Barsoom should yearn to spill theblood of the blasphemer, the sacrilegist; butlet us mix wisdom with our righteous hate.The Prince of Helium is bound upon an errandwhich we ourselves, but a moment since, werewishing that we might undertake.

“Let him go then and slay the black. Whenhe returns we shall still be here to bar his wayto the outer world, and thus we shall have ridourselves of two enemies, nor have incurredthe displeasure of the Father of Therns.”

As he spoke I could not but note the craftyglint in his evil eyes, and while I saw theapparent logic of his reasoning I felt, sub-consciously perhaps, that his words did butveil some sinister intent. The other thernturned toward him in evident surprise, butwhen Lakor had whispered a few brief wordsinto his ear he, too, drew back and nodded ac-quiescence to his superior’s suggestion.

“Proceed, John Carter,” said Lakor; “butknow that if Thurid does not lay you low therewill be those awaiting your return who willsee that you never pass again into the sun-light of the upper world. Go!”

During our conversation Woola had beengrowling and bristling close to my side. Oc-


casionally he would look up into my face witha low, pleading whine, as though begging forthe word that would send him headlong at thebare throats before him. He, too, sensed thevillainy behind the smooth words.

Beyond the therns several doorwaysopened off the guardroom, and toward theone upon the extreme right Lakor motioned.

“That way leads to Thurid,” he said.But when I would have called Woola to fol-

low me there the beast whined and held back,and at last ran quickly to the first opening atthe left, where he stood emitting his coughingbark, as though urging me to follow him uponthe right way.

I turned a questioning look upon Lakor.“The brute is seldom wrong,” I said, “and

while I do not doubt your superior knowledge,Thern, I think that I shall do well to listen tothe voice of instinct that is backed by love andloyalty.”

As I spoke I smiled grimly that he mightknow without words that I distrusted him.

“As you will,” the fellow replied with ashrug. “In the end it shall be all the same.”

I turned and followed Woola into the left-hand passage, and though my back was to-ward my enemies, my ears were on the alert;yet I heard no sound of pursuit. The passage-way was dimly lighted by occasional radiumbulbs, the universal lighting medium of Bar-soom.

These same lamps may have been doingcontinuous duty in these subterranean cham-bers for ages, since they require no attention


and are so compounded that they give off butthe minutest of their substance in the genera-tion of years of luminosity.

We had proceeded for but a short distancewhen we commenced to pass the mouths ofdiverging corridors, but not once did Woolahesitate. It was at the opening to one ofthese corridors upon my right that I presentlyheard a sound that spoke more plainly to JohnCarter, fighting man, than could the wordsof my mother tongue—it was the clank ofmetal—the metal of a warrior’s harness—andit came from a little distance up the corridorupon my right.

Woola heard it, too, and like a flash hehad wheeled and stood facing the threateneddanger, his mane all abristle and all his rowsof glistening fangs bared by snarling, back-drawn lips. With a gesture I silenced him, andtogether we drew aside into another corridora few paces farther on.

Here we waited; nor did we have long towait, for presently we saw the shadows of twomen fall upon the floor of the main corridorathwart the doorway of our hiding place. Verycautiously they were moving now—the acci-dental clank that had alarmed me was not re-peated.

Presently they came opposite our station;nor was I surprised to see that the two wereLakor and his companion of the guardroom.

They walked very softly, and in the righthand of each gleamed a keen long-sword.They halted quite close to the entrance of ourretreat, whispering to each other.


“Can it be that we have distanced them al-ready?” said Lakor.

“Either that or the beast has led the manupon a wrong trail,” replied the other, “for theway which we took is by far the shorter tothis point—for him who knows it. John Carterwould have found it a short road to death hadhe taken it as you suggested to him.”

“Yes,” said Lakor, “no amount of fightingability would have saved him from the piv-oted flagstone. He surely would have steppedupon it, and by now, if the pit beneath it has abottom, which Thurid denies, he should havebeen rapidly approaching it. Curses on thatcalot of his that warned him toward the saferavenue!”

“There be other dangers ahead of him,though,” spoke Lakor’s fellow, “which he maynot so easily escape—should he succeed in es-caping our two good swords. Consider, for ex-ample, what chance he will have, coming un-expectedly into the chamber of—”

I would have given much to have heard thebalance of that conversation that I might havebeen warned of the perils that lay ahead, butfate intervened, and just at the very instantof all other instants that I would not haveelected to do it, I sneezed.

THE TEMPLE OFTHE SUN

There was nothing for it now other than tofight; nor did I have any advantage as Isprang, sword in hand, into the corridor beforethe two therns, for my untimely sneeze hadwarned them of my presence and they wereready for me.

There were no words, for they would havebeen a waste of breath. The very presence ofthe two proclaimed their treachery. That theywere following to fall upon me unawares wasall too plain, and they, of course, must haveknown that I understood their plan.

In an instant I was engaged with both,and though I loathe the very name of thern,I must in all fairness admit that they aremighty swordsmen; and these two were no ex-ception, unless it were that they were evenmore skilled and fearless than the averageamong their race.

While it lasted it was indeed as joyous aconflict as I ever had experienced. Twice atleast I saved my breast from the mortal thrustof piercing steel only by the wondrous agility

33


with which my earthly muscles endow me un-der the conditions of lesser gravity and airpressure upon Mars.

Yet even so I came near to tasting deaththat day in the gloomy corridor beneathMars’s southern pole, for Lakor played a trickupon me that in all my experience of fightingupon two planets I never before had witnessedthe like of.

The other thern was engaging me at thetime, and I was forcing him back—touchinghim here and there with my point until hewas bleeding from a dozen wounds, yet not be-ing able to penetrate his marvelous guard toreach a vulnerable spot for the brief instantthat would have been sufficient to send him tohis ancestors.

It was then that Lakor quickly unslung abelt from his harness, and as I stepped backto parry a wicked thrust he lashed one end ofit about my left ankle so that it wound therefor an instant, while he jerked suddenly uponthe other end, throwing me heavily upon myback.

Then, like leaping panthers, they wereupon me; but they had reckoned withoutWoola, and before ever a blade touched me,a roaring embodiment of a thousand demonshurtled above my prostrate form and my loyalMartian calot was upon them.

Imagine, if you can, a huge grizzly with tenlegs armed with mighty talons and an enor-mous froglike mouth splitting his head fromear to ear, exposing three rows of long, whitetusks. Then endow this creature of your imag-


ination with the agility and ferocity of a half-starved Bengal tiger and the strength of aspan of bulls, and you will have some faintconception of Woola in action.

Before I could call him off he had crushedLakor into a jelly with a single blow of onemighty paw, and had literally torn the otherthern to ribbons; yet when I spoke to himsharply he cowed sheepishly as though he haddone a thing to deserve censure and chastise-ment.

Never had I had the heart to punish Wooladuring the long years that had passed sincethat first day upon Mars when the green jedof the Tharks had placed him on guard overme, and I had won his love and loyalty fromthe cruel and loveless masters of his formerlife, yet I believe he would have submitted toany cruelty that I might have inflicted uponhim, so wondrous was his affection for me.

The diadem in the center of the circlet ofgold upon the brow of Lakor proclaimed hima Holy Thern, while his companion, not thusadorned, was a lesser thern, though from hisharness I gleaned that he had reached theNinth Cycle, which is but one below that ofthe Holy Therns.

As I stood for a moment looking at thegruesome havoc Woola had wrought, there re-curred to me the memory of that other occa-sion upon which I had masqueraded in thewig, diadem, and harness of Sator Throg, theHoly Thern whom Thuvia of Ptarth had slain,and now it occurred to me that it might proveof worth to utilize Lakor’s trappings for the


same purpose.A moment later I had torn his yellow wig

from his bald pate and transferred it and thecirclet, as well as all his harness, to my ownperson.

Woola did not approve of the metamorpho-sis. He sniffed at me and growled ominously,but when I spoke to him and patted his hugehead he at length became reconciled to thechange, and at my command trotted off alongthe corridor in the direction we had been go-ing when our progress had been interruptedby the therns.

We moved cautiously now, warned by thefragment of conversation I had overheard. Ikept abreast of Woola that we might have thebenefit of all our eyes for what might appearsuddenly ahead to menace us, and well it wasthat we were forewarned.

At the bottom of a flight of narrow stepsthe corridor turned sharply back upon itself,immediately making another turn in the orig-inal direction, so that at that point it formed aperfect letter S, the top leg of which debouchedsuddenly into a large chamber, illy lighted,and the floor of which was completely coveredby venomous snakes and loathsome reptiles.

To have attempted to cross that floor wouldhave been to court instant death, and for amoment I was almost completely discouraged.Then it occurred to me that Thurid and MataiShang with their party must have crossed it,and so there was a way.

Had it not been for the fortunate accidentby which I overheard even so small a portion


of the therns’ conversation we should haveblundered at least a step or two into that wrig-gling mass of destruction, and a single stepwould have been all-sufficient to have sealedour doom.

These were the only reptiles I had everseen upon Barsoom, but I knew from theirsimilarity to the fossilized remains of suppos-edly extinct species I had seen in the mu-seums of Helium that they comprised manyof the known prehistoric reptilian genera, aswell as others undiscovered.

A more hideous aggregation of monstershad never before assailed my vision. It wouldbe futile to attempt to describe them to Earthmen, since substance is the only thing whichthey possess in common with any creatureof the past or present with which you arefamiliar—even their venom is of an unearthlyvirulence that, by comparison, would makethe cobra de capello seem quite as harmlessas an angleworm.

As they spied me there was a concertedrush by those nearest the entrance where westood, but a line of radium bulbs inset alongthe threshold of their chamber brought themto a sudden halt—evidently they dared notcross that line of light.

I had been quite sure that they would notventure beyond the room in which I had dis-covered them, though I had not guessed atwhat deterred them. The simple fact that wehad found no reptiles in the corridor throughwhich we had just come was sufficient assur-ance that they did not venture there.


I drew Woola out of harm’s way, and thenbegan a careful survey of as much of theChamber of Reptiles as I could see from whereI stood. As my eyes became accustomed to thedim light of its interior I gradually made outa low gallery at the far end of the apartmentfrom which opened several exits.

Coming as close to the threshold as Idared, I followed this gallery with my eyes,discovering that it circled the room as far asI could see. Then I glanced above me alongthe upper edge of the entrance to which wehad come, and there, to my delight, I saw anend of the gallery not a foot above my head. Inan instant I had leaped to it and called Woolaafter me.

Here there were no reptiles—the way wasclear to the opposite side of the hideouschamber—and a moment later Woola and Idropped down to safety in the corridor beyond.

Not ten minutes later we came into a vastcircular apartment of white marble, the wallsof which were inlaid with gold in the strangehieroglyphics of the First Born.

From the high dome of this mighty apart-ment a huge circular column extended to thefloor, and as I watched I saw that it slowly re-volved.

I had reached the base of the Temple of theSun!

Somewhere above me lay Dejah Thoris,and with her were Phaidor, daughter of MataiShang, and Thuvia of Ptarth. But how toreach them, now that I had found the only vul-nerable spot in their mighty prison, was still


a baffling riddle.Slowly I circled the great shaft, looking for

a means of ingress. Part way around I founda tiny radium flash torch, and as I examinedit in mild curiosity as to its presence there inthis almost inaccessible and unknown spot, Icame suddenly upon the insignia of the houseof Thurid jewel-inset in its metal case.

I am upon the right trail, I thought, asI slipped the bauble into the pocket-pouchwhich hung from my harness. Then I contin-ued my search for the entrance, which I knewmust be somewhere about; nor had I long tosearch, for almost immediately thereafter Icame upon a small door so cunningly inlaidin the shaft’s base that it might have passedunnoticed by a less keen or careful observer.

There was the door that would lead mewithin the prison, but where was the means toopen it? No button or lock were visible. Againand again I went carefully over every squareinch of its surface, but the most that I couldfind was a tiny pinhole a little above and tothe right of the door’s center—a pinhole thatseemed only an accident of manufacture or animperfection of material.

Into this minute aperture I attempted topeer, but whether it was but a fraction of aninch deep or passed completely through thedoor I could not tell—at least no light showedbeyond it. I put my ear to it next and lis-tened, but again my efforts brought negligibleresults.

During these experiments Woola had beenstanding at my side gazing intently at the


door, and as my glance fell upon him it oc-curred to me to test the correctness of my hy-pothesis, that this portal had been the meansof ingress to the temple used by Thurid, theblack dator, and Matai Shang, Father of Th-erns.

Turning away abruptly, I called to him tofollow me. For a moment he hesitated, andthen leaped after me, whining and tugging atmy harness to draw me back. I walked on,however, some distance from the door beforeI let him have his way, that I might see pre-cisely what he would do. Then I permittedhim to lead me wherever he would.

Straight back to that baffling portal hedragged me, again taking up his position fac-ing the blank stone, gazing straight at itsshining surface. For an hour I worked to solvethe mystery of the combination that wouldopen the way before me.

Carefully I recalled every circumstance ofmy pursuit of Thurid, and my conclusion wasidentical with my original belief—that Thuridhad come this way without other assistancethan his own knowledge and passed throughthe door that barred my progress, unaidedfrom within. But how had he accomplishedit?

I recalled the incident of the Chamberof Mystery in the Golden Cliffs that time Ihad freed Thuvia of Ptarth from the dun-geon of the therns, and she had taken a slen-der, needle-like key from the keyring of herdead jailer to open the door leading back intothe Chamber of Mystery where Tars Tarkas


fought for his life with the great banths. Sucha tiny keyhole as now defied me had openedthe way to the intricate lock in that other door.

Hastily I dumped the contents of mypocket-pouch upon the ground before me.Could I but find a slender bit of steel I mightyet fashion a key that would give me ingressto the temple prison.

As I examined the heterogeneous collec-tion of odds and ends that is always to befound in the pocket-pouch of a Martian war-rior my hand fell upon the emblazoned ra-dium flash torch of the black dator.

As I was about to lay the thing aside asof no value in my present predicament myeyes chanced upon a few strange charactersroughly and freshly scratched upon the softgold of the case.

Casual curiosity prompted me to decipherthem, but what I read carried no immediatemeaning to my mind. There were three setsof characters, one below another:

3 — 50 T1 — 1 X9 — 25 T

For only an instant my curiosity waspiqued, and then I replaced the torch in mypocket-pouch, but my fingers had not un-clasped from it when there rushed to my mem-ory the recollection of the conversation be-tween Lakor and his companion when thelesser thern had quoted the words of Thuridand scoffed at them: “And what think you


of the ridiculous matter of the light? Letthe light shine with the intensity of three ra-dium units for fifty tals”—ah, there was thefirst line of characters upon the torch’s metalcase—‘3 — 50 T’; “and for one xat let it shinewith the intensity of one radium unit”—therewas the second line; “and then for twenty-fivetals with nine units.”

The formula was complete; but—what didit mean?

I thought I knew, and, seizing a powerfulmagnifying glass from the litter of my pocket-pouch, I applied myself to a careful exami-nation of the marble immediately about thepinhole in the door. I could have cried aloudin exultation when my scrutiny disclosed thealmost invisible incrustation of particles ofcarbonized electrons which are thrown off bythese Martian torches.

It was evident that for countless ages ra-dium torches had been applied to this pinhole,and for what purpose there could be but a sin-gle answer—the mechanism of the lock wasactuated by light rays; and I, John Carter,Prince of Helium, held the combination in myhand—scratched by the hand of my enemyupon his own torch case.

In a cylindrical bracelet of gold about mywrist was my Barsoomian chronometer––adelicate instrument that records the tals andxats and zodes of Martian time, presentingthem to view beneath a strong crystal muchafter the manner of an earthly odometer.

Timing my operations carefully, I held thetorch to the small aperture in the door, regu-


lating the intensity of the light by means ofthe thumb-lever upon the side of the case.

For fifty tals I let three units of light shinefull in the pinhole, then one unit for one xat,and for twenty-five tals nine units. Those lasttwenty-five tals were the longest twenty-fiveseconds of my life. Would the lock click at theend of those seemingly interminable intervalsof time?

Twenty-three! Twenty-four! Twenty-five!I shut off the light with a snap. For seven

tals I waited—there had been no appreciableeffect upon the lock’s mechanism. Could it bethat my theory was entirely wrong?

Hold! Had the nervous strain resultedin a hallucination, or did the door reallymove? Slowly the solid stone sank noiselesslyback into the wall—there was no hallucina-tion here.

Back and back it slid for ten feet until ithad disclosed at its right a narrow doorwayleading into a dark and narrow corridor thatparalleled the outer wall. Scarcely was the en-trance uncovered than Woola and I had leapedthrough—then the door slipped quietly backinto place.

Down the corridor at some distance I sawthe faint reflection of a light, and toward thiswe made our way. At the point where the lightshone was a sharp turn, and a little distancebeyond this a brilliantly lighted chamber.

Here we discovered a spiral stairway lead-ing up from the center of the circular room.

Immediately I knew that we had reachedthe center of the base of the Temple of the


Sun—the spiral runway led upward past theinner walls of the prison cells. Somewhereabove me was Dejah Thoris, unless Thuridand Matai Shang had already succeeded instealing her.

We had scarcely started up the runwaywhen Woola suddenly displayed the wildestexcitement. He leaped back and forth, snap-ping at my legs and harness, until I thoughtthat he was mad, and finally when I pushedhim from me and started once more to ascendhe grasped my sword arm between his jawsand dragged me back.

No amount of scolding or cuffing would suf-fice to make him release me, and I was en-tirely at the mercy of his brute strength un-less I cared to use my dagger upon him withmy left hand; but, mad or no, I had not theheart to run the sharp blade into that faithfulbody.

Down into the chamber he dragged me,and across it to the side opposite that at whichwe had entered. Here was another door-way leading into a corridor which ran directlydown a steep incline. Without a moment’s hes-itation Woola jerked me along this rocky pas-sage.

Presently he stopped and released me,standing between me and the way we hadcome, looking up into my face as though to askif I would now follow him voluntarily or if hemust still resort to force.

Looking ruefully at the marks of his greatteeth upon my bare arm I decided to do as heseemed to wish me to do. After all, his strange


instinct might be more dependable than myfaulty human judgment.

And well it was that I had been forced tofollow him. But a short distance from the cir-cular chamber we came suddenly into a bril-liantly lighted labyrinth of crystal glass parti-tioned passages.

At first I thought it was one vast, unbro-ken chamber, so clear and transparent werethe walls of the winding corridors, but after Ihad nearly brained myself a couple of timesby attempting to pass through solid vitreouswalls I went more carefully.

We had proceeded but a few yards alongthe corridor that had given us entrance to thisstrange maze when Woola gave mouth to amost frightful roar, at the same time dashingagainst the clear partition at our left.

The resounding echoes of that fearsomecry were still reverberating through the sub-terranean chambers when I saw the thingthat had startled it from the faithful beast.

Far in the distance, dimly through themany thicknesses of intervening crystal, asin a haze that made them seem unrealand ghostly, I discerned the figures of eightpeople—three females and five men.

At the same instant, evidently startledby Woola’s fierce cry, they halted and lookedabout. Then, of a sudden, one of them, awoman, held her arms out toward me, andeven at that great distance I could see thather lips moved—it was Dejah Thoris, my everbeautiful and ever youthful Princess of He-lium.


With her were Thuvia of Ptarth, Phaidor,daughter of Matai Shang, and Thurid, and theFather of Therns, and the three lesser thernsthat had accompanied them.

Thurid shook his fist at me, and then two ofthe therns grasped Dejah Thoris and Thuviaroughly by their arms and hurried them on.A moment later they had disappeared into astone corridor beyond the labyrinth of glass.

They say that love is blind; but so greata love as that of Dejah Thoris that knew meeven beneath the thern disguise I wore andacross the misty vista of that crystal mazemust indeed be far from blind.

THE SECRETTOWER

I have no stomach to narrate the monotonousevents of the tedious days that Woola and Ispent ferreting our way across the labyrinthof glass, through the dark and devious waysbeyond that led beneath the Valley Dor andGolden Cliffs to emerge at last upon the flankof the Otz Mountains just above the Valley ofLost Souls—that pitiful purgatory peopled bythe poor unfortunates who dare not continuetheir abandoned pilgrimage to Dor, or returnto the various lands of the outer world fromwhence they came.

Here the trail of Dejah Thoris’ abductorsled along the mountains’ base, across steepand rugged ravines, by the side of appallingprecipices, and sometimes out into the val-ley, where we found fighting aplenty with themembers of the various tribes that make upthe population of this vale of hopelessness.

But through it all we came at last towhere the way led up a narrow gorge thatgrew steeper and more impracticable at everystep until before us loomed a mighty fortress

47


buried beneath the side of an overhangingcliff.

Here was the secret hiding place of MataiShang, Father of Therns. Here, surrounded bya handful of the faithful, the hekkador of theancient faith, who had once been served bymillions of vassals and dependents, dispensedthe spiritual words among the half dozen na-tions of Barsoom that still clung tenaciouslyto their false and discredited religion.

Darkness was just falling as we came insight of the seemingly impregnable walls ofthis mountain stronghold, and lest we be seenI drew back with Woola behind a jutting gran-ite promontory, into a clump of the hardy, pur-ple scrub that thrives upon the barren sides ofOtz.

Here we lay until the quick transition fromdaylight to darkness had passed. Then I creptout to approach the fortress walls in search ofa way within.

Either through carelessness or over-confidence in the supposed inaccessibility oftheir hiding place, the triple-barred gate stoodajar. Beyond were a handful of guards, laugh-ing and talking over one of their incomprehen-sible Barsoomian games.

I saw that none of the guardsmen had beenof the party that accompanied Thurid andMatai Shang; and so, relying entirely upon mydisguise, I walked boldly through the gatewayand up to the thern guard.

The men stopped their game and looked upat me, but there was no sign of suspicion. Sim-ilarly they looked at Woola, growling at my

THE SECRET TOWER 49

heel.“Kaor!” I said in true Martian greeting,

and the warriors arose and saluted me. “Ihave but just found my way hither from theGolden Cliffs,” I continued, “and seek audi-ence with the hekkador, Matai Shang, Fatherof Therns. Where may he be found?”

“Follow me,” said one of the guard, and,turning, led me across the outer courtyard to-ward a second buttressed wall.

Why the apparent ease with which I seem-ingly deceived them did not rouse my suspi-cions I know not, unless it was that my mindwas still so full of that fleeting glimpse of mybeloved princess that there was room in it fornaught else. Be that as it may, the fact isthat I marched buoyantly behind my guidestraight into the jaws of death.

Afterward I learned that thern spies hadbeen aware of my coming for hours before Ireached the hidden fortress.

The gate had been purposely left ajar totempt me on. The guards had been schooledwell in their part of the conspiracy; and I,more like a schoolboy than a seasoned warrior,ran headlong into the trap.

At the far side of the outer court a nar-row door let into the angle made by one of thebuttresses with the wall. Here my guide pro-duced a key and opened the way within; then,stepping back, he motioned me to enter.

“Matai Shang is in the temple court be-yond,” he said; and as Woola and I passedthrough, the fellow closed the door quicklyupon us.


The nasty laugh that came to my earsthrough the heavy planking of the door afterthe lock clicked was my first intimation thatall was not as it should be.

I found myself in a small, circular chamberwithin the buttress. Before me a door opened,presumably, upon the inner court beyond. Fora moment I hesitated, all my suspicions nowsuddenly, though tardily, aroused; then, witha shrug of my shoulders, I opened the doorand stepped out into the glare of torches thatlighted the inner court.

Directly opposite me a massive tower roseto a height of three hundred feet. It was ofthe strangely beautiful modern Barsoomianstyle of architecture, its entire surface handcarved in bold relief with intricate and fanci-ful designs. Thirty feet above the courtyardand overlooking it was a broad balcony, andthere, indeed, was Matai Shang, and with himwere Thurid and Phaidor, Thuvia, and DejahThoris—the last two heavily ironed. A hand-ful of thern warriors stood just behind the lit-tle party.

As I entered the enclosure the eyes of thosein the balcony were full upon me.

An ugly smile distorted the cruel lips ofMatai Shang. Thurid hurled a taunt at meand placed a familiar hand upon the shoulderof my princess. Like a tigress she turned uponhim, striking the beast a heavy blow with themanacles upon her wrist.

He would have struck back had not MataiShang interfered, and then I saw that the twomen were not over-friendly; for the manner of

THE SECRET TOWER 51

the thern was arrogant and domineering ashe made it plain to the First Born that thePrincess of Helium was the personal propertyof the Father of Therns. And Thurid’s bearingtoward the ancient hekkador savored not atall of liking or respect.

When the altercation in the balcony hadsubsided Matai Shang turned again to me.

“Earth man,” he cried, “you have earneda more ignoble death than now lies withinour weakened power to inflict upon you; butthat the death you die tonight may be doublybitter, know you that when you have passed,your widow becomes the wife of Matai Shang,Hekkador of the Holy Therns, for a Martianyear.

“At the end of that time, as you know,she shall be discarded, as is the law amongus, but not, as is usual, to lead a quiet andhonored life as high priestess of some hal-lowed shrine. Instead, Dejah Thoris, Princessof Helium, shall become the plaything of mylieutenants—perhaps of thy most hated en-emy, Thurid, the black dator.”

As he ceased speaking he awaited in si-lence evidently for some outbreak of rage uponmy part—something that would have added tothe spice of his revenge. But I did not give himthe satisfaction that he craved.

Instead, I did the one thing of all othersthat might rouse his anger and increase hishatred of me; for I knew that if I died De-jah Thoris, too, would find a way to die beforethey could heap further tortures or indignitiesupon her.


Of all the holy of holies which the thernvenerates and worships none is more reveredthan the yellow wig which covers his baldpate, and next thereto comes the circlet of goldand the great diadem, whose scintillant raysmark the attainment of the Tenth Cycle.

And, knowing this, I removed the wig andcirclet from my head, tossing them carelesslyupon the flagging of the court. Then I wipedmy feet upon the yellow tresses; and as agroan of rage arose from the balcony I spatfull upon the holy diadem.

Matai Shang went livid with anger, butupon the lips of Thurid I could see a grimsmile of amusement, for to him these thingswere not holy; so, lest he should derive toomuch amusement from my act, I cried: “Andthus did I with the holies of Issus, Goddess ofLife Eternal, ere I threw Issus herself to themob that once had worshiped her, to be tornto pieces in her own temple.”

That put an end to Thurid’s grinning, forhe had been high in the favor of Issus.

“Let us have an end to this blaspheming!”he cried, turning to the Father of Therns.

Matai Shang rose and, leaning over theedge of the balcony, gave voice to the weirdcall that I had heard from the lips of thepriests upon the tiny balcony upon the face ofthe Golden Cliffs overlooking the Valley Dor,when, in times past, they called the fearsomewhite apes and the hideous plant men to thefeast of victims floating down the broad bo-som of the mysterious Iss toward the silian-infested waters of the Lost Sea of Korus. “Let

THE SECRET TOWER 53

loose the death!” he cried, and immediately adozen doors in the base of the tower swungopen, and a dozen grim and terrible banthssprang into the arena.

This was not the first time that I had facedthe ferocious Barsoomian lion, but never hadI been pitted, single-handed, against a fulldozen of them. Even with the assistance ofthe fierce Woola, there could be but a singleoutcome to so unequal a struggle.

For a moment the beasts hesitated be-neath the brilliant glare of the torches; butpresently their eyes, becoming accustomedto the light, fell upon Woola and me, andwith bristling manes and deep-throated roarsthey advanced, lashing their tawny sides withtheir powerful tails.

In the brief interval of life that was left meI shot a last, parting glance toward my DejahThoris. Her beautiful face was set in an ex-pression of horror; and as my eyes met hersshe extended both arms toward me as, strug-gling with the guards who now held her, sheendeavored to cast herself from the balconyinto the pit beneath, that she might sharemy death with me. Then, as the banths wereabout to close upon me, she turned and buriedher dear face in her arms.

Suddenly my attention was drawn towardThuvia of Ptarth. The beautiful girl was lean-ing far over the edge of the balcony, her eyesbright with excitement.

In another instant the banths would beupon me, but I could not force my gaze fromthe features of the red girl, for I knew that


her expression meant anything but the enjoy-ment of the grim tragedy that would so soonbe enacted below her; there was some deeper,hidden meaning which I sought to solve.

For an instant I thought of relying onmy earthly muscles and agility to escape thebanths and reach the balcony, which I couldeasily have done, but I could not bring myselfto desert the faithful Woola and leave him todie alone beneath the cruel fangs of the hun-gry banths; that is not the way upon Barsoom,nor was it ever the way of John Carter.

Then the secret of Thuvia’s excitement be-came apparent as from her lips there issuedthe purring sound I had heard once before;that time that, within the Golden Cliffs, shecalled the fierce banths about her and ledthem as a shepherdess might lead her flockof meek and harmless sheep.

At the first note of that soothing sound thebanths halted in their tracks, and every fiercehead went high as the beasts sought the originof the familiar call. Presently they discoveredthe red girl in the balcony above them, and,turning, roared out their recognition and theirgreeting.

Guards sprang to drag Thuvia away, butere they had succeeded she had hurled a vol-ley of commands at the listening brutes, andas one they turned and marched back intotheir dens.

“You need not fear them now, John Carter!”cried Thuvia, before they could silence her.“Those banths will never harm you now, norWoola, either.”

THE SECRET TOWER 55

It was all I cared to know. There wasnaught to keep me from that balcony now, andwith a long, running leap I sprang far aloft un-til my hands grasped its lowest sill.

In an instant all was wild confusion. MataiShang shrank back. Thurid sprang forwardwith drawn sword to cut me down.

Again Dejah Thoris wielded her heavyirons and fought him back. Then Matai Shanggrasped her about the waist and dragged heraway through a door leading within the tower.

For an instant Thurid hesitated, and then,as though fearing that the Father of Thernswould escape him with the Princess of He-lium, he, too, dashed from the balcony in theirwake.

Phaidor alone retained her presence ofmind. Two of the guards she ordered to bearaway Thuvia of Ptarth; the others she com-manded to remain and prevent me from fol-lowing. Then she turned toward me.

“John Carter,” she cried, “for the last timeI offer you the love of Phaidor, daughter ofthe Holy Hekkador. Accept and your princessshall be returned to the court of her grandfa-ther, and you shall live in peace and happi-ness. Refuse and the fate that my father hasthreatened shall fall upon Dejah Thoris.

“You cannot save her now, for by this timethey have reached a place where even youmay not follow. Refuse and naught can saveyou; for, though the way to the last strongholdof the Holy Therns was made easy for you, theway hence hath been made impossible. Whatsay you?”


“You knew my answer, Phaidor,” I replied,“before ever you spoke. Make way,” I criedto the guards, “for John Carter, Prince of He-lium, would pass!”

With that I leaped over the low balusterthat surrounded the balcony, and with drawnlong-sword faced my enemies.

There were three of them; but Phaidormust have guessed what the outcome of thebattle would be, for she turned and fled fromthe balcony the moment she saw that I wouldhave none of her proposition.

The three guardsmen did not wait for myattack. Instead, they rushed me—the three ofthem simultaneously; and it was that whichgave me an advantage, for they fouled one an-other in the narrow precincts of the balcony, sothat the foremost of them stumbled full uponmy blade at the first onslaught.

The red stain upon my point roused to itsfull the old blood-lust of the fighting man thathas ever been so strong within my breast, sothat my blade flew through the air with aswiftness and deadly accuracy that threw thetwo remaining therns into wild despair.

When at last the sharp steel found theheart of one of them the other turned to flee,and, guessing that his steps would lead himalong the way taken by those I sought, I lethim keep ever far enough ahead to think thathe was safely escaping my sword.

Through several inner chambers he raceduntil he came to a spiral runway. Up this hedashed, I in close pursuit. At the upper endwe came out into a small chamber, the walls of

THE SECRET TOWER 57

which were plank except for a single windowoverlooking the slopes of Otz and the Valley ofLost Souls beyond.

Here the fellow tore frantically at what ap-peared to be but a piece of the blank wall oppo-site the single window. In an instant I guessedthat it was a secret exit from the room, and soI paused that he might have an opportunity tonegotiate it, for I cared nothing to take the lifeof this poor servitor—all I craved was a clearroad in pursuit of Dejah Thoris, my long-lostprincess.

But, try as he would, the panel would yieldneither to cunning nor force, so that eventu-ally he gave it up and turned to face me.

“Go thy way, Thern,” I said to him, pointingtoward the entrance to the runway up whichwe had but just come. “I have no quarrel withyou, nor do I crave your life. Go!”

For answer he sprang upon me with hissword, and so suddenly, at that, that I waslike to have gone down before his first rush.So there was nothing for it but to give himwhat he sought, and that as quickly as mightbe, that I might not be delayed too long in thischamber while Matai Shang and Thurid madeway with Dejah Thoris and Thuvia of Ptarth.

The fellow was a clever swords-man—resourceful and extremely tricky.In fact, he seemed never to have heard thatthere existed such a thing as a code of honor,for he repeatedly outraged a dozen Barsoo-mian fighting customs that an honorable manwould rather die than ignore.

He even went so far as to snatch his holy


wig from his head and throw it in my face, soas to blind me for a moment while he thrustat my unprotected breast.

When he thrust, however, I was not there,for I had fought with therns before; and whilenone had ever resorted to precisely that sameexpedient, I knew them to be the least hon-orable and most treacherous fighters uponMars, and so was ever on the alert for somenew and devilish subterfuge when I was en-gaged with one of their race.

But at length he overdid the thing; for,drawing his shortsword, he hurled it, javelin-wise, at my body, at the same instant rushingupon me with his long-sword. A single sweep-ing circle of my own blade caught the flyingweapon and hurled it clattering against thefar wall, and then, as I sidestepped my an-tagonist’s impetuous rush, I let him have mypoint full in the stomach as he hurtled by.

Clear to the hilt my weapon passedthrough his body, and with a frightful shriekhe sank to the floor, dead.

Halting only for the brief instant that wasrequired to wrench my sword from the car-cass of my late antagonist, I sprang across thechamber to the blank wall beyond, throughwhich the thern had attempted to pass. HereI sought for the secret of its lock, but all to noavail.

In despair I tried to force the thing, butthe cold, unyielding stone might well havelaughed at my futile, puny endeavors. In fact,I could have sworn that I caught the faint sug-gestion of taunting laughter from beyond the

THE SECRET TOWER 59

baffling panel.In disgust I desisted from my useless ef-

forts and stepped to the chamber’s single win-dow.

The slopes of Otz and the distant Valley ofLost Souls held nothing to compel my interestthen; but, towering far above me, the tower’scarved wall riveted my keenest attention.

Somewhere within that massive pile wasDejah Thoris. Above me I could see windows.There, possibly, lay the only way by which Icould reach her. The risk was great, but nottoo great when the fate of a world’s most won-drous woman was at stake.

I glanced below. A hundred feet beneathlay jagged granite boulders at the brink of afrightful chasm upon which the tower abut-ted; and if not upon the boulders, then at thechasm’s bottom, lay death, should a foot slipbut once, or clutching fingers loose their holdfor the fraction of an instant.

But there was no other way and with ashrug, which I must admit was half shudder,I stepped to the window’s outer sill and beganmy perilous ascent.

To my dismay I found that, unlike theornamentation upon most Heliumetic struc-tures, the edges of the carvings were quitegenerally rounded, so that at best my everyhold was most precarious.

Fifty feet above me commenced a series ofprojecting cylindrical stones some six inchesin diameter. These apparently circled thetower at six-foot intervals, in bands six feetapart; and as each stone cylinder protruded


some four or five inches beyond the surfaceof the other ornamentation, they presented acomparatively easy mode of ascent could I butreach them.

Laboriously I climbed toward them by wayof some windows which lay below them, for Ihoped that I might find ingress to the towerthrough one of these, and thence an easier av-enue along which to prosecute my search.

At times so slight was my hold upon therounded surfaces of the carving’s edges thata sneeze, a cough, or even a slight gust ofwind would have dislodged me and sent mehurtling to the depths below.

But finally I reached a point where my fin-gers could just clutch the sill of the lowest win-dow, and I was on the point of breathing a sighof relief when the sound of voices came to mefrom above through the open window.

“He can never solve the secret of that lock.”The voice was Matai Shang’s. “Let us proceedto the hangar above that we may be far tothe south before he finds another way—shouldthat be possible.”

“All things seem possible to that vile calot,”replied another voice, which I recognized asThurid’s.

“Then let us haste,” said Matai Shang.“But to be doubly sure, I will leave two whoshall patrol this runway. Later they may fol-low us upon another flier—overtaking us atKaol.”

My upstretched fingers never reached thewindow’s sill. At the first sound of the voicesI drew back my hand and clung there to my

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perilous perch, flattened against the perpen-dicular wall, scarce daring to breathe.

What a horrible position, indeed, in whichto be discovered by Thurid! He had but to leanfrom the window to push me with his sword’spoint into eternity.

Presently the sound of the voices becamefainter, and once again I took up my haz-ardous ascent, now more difficult, since morecircuitous, for I must climb so as to avoid thewindows.

Matai Shang’s reference to the hangar andthe fliers indicated that my destination laynothing short of the roof of the tower, and to-ward this seemingly distant goal I set my face.

The most difficult and dangerous part ofthe journey was accomplished at last, and itwas with relief that I felt my fingers closeabout the lowest of the stone cylinders.

It is true that these projections were too farapart to make the balance of the ascent any-thing of a sinecure, but I at least had alwayswithin my reach a point of safety to which Imight cling in case of accident.

Some ten feet below the roof, the wall in-clined slightly inward possibly a foot in thelast ten feet, and here the climbing was in-deed immeasurably easier, so that my fingerssoon clutched the eaves.

As I drew my eyes above the level of thetower’s top I saw a flier all but ready to rise.

Upon her deck were Matai Shang, Phaidor,Dejah Thoris, Thuvia of Ptarth, and a few th-ern warriors, while near her was Thurid in theact of clambering aboard.


He was not ten paces from me, facing inthe opposite direction; and what cruel freakof fate should have caused him to turn aboutjust as my eyes topped the roof ’s edge I maynot even guess.

But turn he did; and when his eyes metmine his wicked face lighted with a malignantsmile as he leaped toward me, where I washastening to scramble to the secure footing ofthe roof.

Dejah Thoris must have seen me at thesame instant, for she screamed a uselesswarning just as Thurid’s foot, swinging in amighty kick, landed full in my face.

Like a felled ox, I reeled and tumbled back-ward over the tower’s side.

ON THE KAOLIANROAD

If there be a fate that is sometimes cruel tome, there surely is a kind and merciful Provi-dence which watches over me.

As I toppled from the tower into the hor-rid abyss below I counted myself already dead;and Thurid must have done likewise, for heevidently did not even trouble himself to lookafter me, but must have turned and mountedthe waiting flier at once.

Ten feet only I fell, and then a loop of mytough, leathern harness caught upon one ofthe cylindrical stone projections in the tower’ssurface—and held. Even when I had ceasedto fall I could not believe the miracle thathad preserved me from instant death, and fora moment I hung there, cold sweat exudingfrom every pore of my body.

But when at last I had worked myself backto a firm position I hesitated to ascend, sinceI could not know that Thurid was not stillawaiting me above.

Presently, however, there came to my earsthe whirring of the propellers of a flier, and as

63


each moment the sound grew fainter I real-ized that the party had proceeded toward thesouth without assuring themselves as to myfate.

Cautiously I retraced my way to the roof,and I must admit that it was with no pleas-ant sensation that I raised my eyes once moreabove its edge; but, to my relief, there was noone in sight, and a moment later I stood safelyupon its broad surface.

To reach the hangar and drag forth theonly other flier which it contained was thework of but an instant; and just as the twothern warriors whom Matai Shang had left toprevent this very contingency emerged uponthe roof from the tower’s interior, I rose abovethem with a taunting laugh.

Then I dived rapidly to the inner courtwhere I had last seen Woola, and to myimmense relief found the faithful beast stillthere.

The twelve great banths lay in the door-ways of their lairs, eyeing him and growlingominously, but they had not disobeyed Thu-via’s injunction; and I thanked the fate thathad made her their keeper within the GoldenCliffs, and endowed her with the kind andsympathetic nature that had won the loyaltyand affection of these fierce beasts for her.

Woola leaped in frantic joy when he dis-covered me; and as the flier touched thepavement of the court for a brief instant hebounded to the deck beside me, and in thebearlike manifestation of his exuberant hap-piness all but caused me to wreck the vessel


against the courtyard’s rocky wall.Amid the angry shouting of thern guards-

men we rose high above the last fortress of theHoly Therns, and then raced straight towardthe northeast and Kaol, the destination whichI had heard from the lips of Matai Shang.

Far ahead, a tiny speck in the distance, Imade out another flier late in the afternoon.It could be none other than that which boremy lost love and my enemies.

I had gained considerably on the craft bynight; and then, knowing that they musthave sighted me and would show no lights af-ter dark, I set my destination compass uponher—that wonderful little Martian mecha-nism which, once attuned to the object of des-tination, points away toward it, irrespective ofevery change in its location.

All that night we raced through the Bar-soomian void, passing over low hills and deadsea bottoms; above long-deserted cities andpopulous centers of red Martian habitationupon the ribbon-like lines of cultivated landwhich border the globe-encircling waterways,which Earth men call the canals of Mars.

Dawn showed that I had gained apprecia-bly upon the flier ahead of me. It was a largercraft than mine, and not so swift; but even so,it had covered an immense distance since theflight began.

The change in vegetation below showed methat we were rapidly nearing the equator. Iwas now near enough to my quarry to haveused my bow gun; but, though I could see thatDejah Thoris was not on deck, I feared to fire


upon the craft which bore her.Thurid was deterred by no such scruples;

and though it must have been difficult for himto believe that it was really I who followedthem, he could not very well doubt the wit-ness of his own eyes; and so he trained theirstern gun upon me with his own hands, andan instant later an explosive radium projec-tile whizzed perilously close above my deck.

The black’s next shot was more accurate,striking my flier full upon the prow and ex-ploding with the instant of contact, rippingwide open the bow buoyancy tanks and dis-abling the engine.

So quickly did my bow drop after the shotthat I scarce had time to lash Woola to thedeck and buckle my own harness to a gunwalering before the craft was hanging stern up andmaking her last long drop to ground.

Her stern buoyancy tanks prevented herdropping with great rapidity; but Thurid wasfiring rapidly now in an attempt to burst thesealso, that I might be dashed to death in theswift fall that would instantly follow a suc-cessful shot.

Shot after shot tore past or into us, butby a miracle neither Woola nor I was hit, norwere the after tanks punctured. This good for-tune could not last indefinitely, and, assuredthat Thurid would not again leave me alive, Iawaited the bursting of the next shell that hit;and then, throwing my hands above my head,I let go my hold and crumpled, limp and inert,dangling in my harness like a corpse.

The ruse worked, and Thurid fired no more


at us. Presently I heard the diminishingsound of whirring propellers and realized thatagain I was safe.

Slowly the stricken flier sank to theground, and when I had freed myself andWoola from the entangling wreckage I foundthat we were upon the verge of a naturalforest—so rare a thing upon the bosom of dy-ing Mars that, outside of the forest in the Val-ley Dor beside the Lost Sea of Korus, I neverbefore had seen its like upon the planet.

From books and travelers I had learnedsomething of the little-known land of Kaol,which lies along the equator almost halfwayround the planet to the east of Helium.

It comprises a sunken area of extremetropical heat, and is inhabited by a nation ofred men varying but little in manners, cus-toms, and appearance from the balance of thered men of Barsoom.

I knew that they were among those of theouter world who still clung tenaciously to thediscredited religion of the Holy Therns, andthat Matai Shang would find a ready wel-come and safe refuge among them; while JohnCarter could look for nothing better than anignoble death at their hands.

The isolation of the Kaolians is renderedalmost complete by the fact that no waterwayconnects their land with that of any other na-tion, nor have they any need of a waterwaysince the low, swampy land which comprisesthe entire area of their domain self-waterstheir abundant tropical crops.

For great distances in all directions rugged


hills and arid stretches of dead sea bottomdiscourage intercourse with them, and sincethere is practically no such thing as foreigncommerce upon warlike Barsoom, where eachnation is sufficient to itself, really little hasbeen known relative to the court of the Jeddakof Kaol and the numerous strange, but inter-esting, people over whom he rules.

Occasional hunting parties have traveledto this out-of-the-way corner of the globe,but the hostility of the natives has usuallybrought disaster upon them, so that even thesport of hunting the strange and savage crea-tures which haunt the jungle fastnesses ofKaol has of later years proved insufficient lureeven to the most intrepid warriors.

It was upon the verge of the land of theKaols that I now knew myself to be, but inwhat direction to search for Dejah Thoris, orhow far into the heart of the great forest Imight have to penetrate I had not the faintestidea.

But not so Woola.Scarcely had I disentangled him than he

raised his head high in air and commencedcircling about at the edge of the forest.Presently he halted, and, turning to see if Iwere following, set off straight into the mazeof trees in the direction we had been going be-fore Thurid’s shot had put an end to our flier.

As best I could, I stumbled after him downa steep declivity beginning at the forest’s edge.

Immense trees reared their mighty headsfar above us, their broad fronds completelyshutting off the slightest glimpse of the sky.


It was easy to see why the Kaolians neededno navy; their cities, hidden in the midst ofthis towering forest, must be entirely invisi-ble from above, nor could a landing be madeby any but the smallest fliers, and then onlywith the greatest risk of accident.

How Thurid and Matai Shang were to landI could not imagine, though later I was tolearn that to the level of the forest top thererises in each city of Kaol a slender watch-tower which guards the Kaolians by day andby night against the secret approach of a hos-tile fleet. To one of these the hekkador of theHoly Therns had no difficulty in approaching,and by its means the party was safely loweredto the ground.

As Woola and I approached the bottomof the declivity the ground became soft andmushy, so that it was with the greatest dif-ficulty that we made any headway whatever.

Slender purple grasses topped with redand yellow fern-like fronds grew rankly allabout us to the height of several feet abovemy head.

Myriad creepers hung festooned in grace-ful loops from tree to tree, and among themwere several varieties of the Martian “man-flower,” whose blooms have eyes and handswith which to see and seize the insects whichform their diet.

The repulsive calot tree was, too, much inevidence. It is a carnivorous plant of about thebigness of a large sage-brush such as dots ourwestern plains. Each branch ends in a set ofstrong jaws, which have been known to drag


down and devour large and formidable beastsof prey.

Both Woola and I had several narrow es-capes from these greedy, arboreous monsters.

Occasional areas of firm sod gave us inter-vals of rest from the arduous labor of travers-ing this gorgeous, twilight swamp, and it wasupon one of these that I finally decided tomake camp for the night which my chronome-ter warned me would soon be upon us.

Many varieties of fruit grew in abundanceabout us; and as Martian calots are omniv-orous, Woola had no difficulty in making asquare meal after I had brought down theviands for him. Then, having eaten, too, Ilay down with my back to that of my faithfulhound, and dropped into a deep and dream-less sleep.

The forest was shrouded in impenetra-ble darkness when a low growl from Woolaawakened me. All about us I could hear thestealthy movement of great, padded feet, andnow and then the wicked gleam of green eyesupon us. Arising, I drew my long-sword andwaited.

Suddenly a deep-toned, horrid roar burstfrom some savage throat almost at my side.What a fool I had been not to have foundsafer lodgings for myself and Woola among thebranches of one of the countless trees that sur-rounded us!

By daylight it would have been compar-atively easy to have hoisted Woola aloft inone manner or another, but now it was toolate. There was nothing for it but to stand our


ground and take our medicine, though, fromthe hideous racket which now assailed ourears, and for which that first roar had seemedto be the signal, I judged that we must be inthe midst of hundreds, perhaps thousands, ofthe fierce, man-eating denizens of the Kaolianjungle.

All the balance of the night they kept uptheir infernal din, but why they did not at-tack us I could not guess, nor am I sure to thisday, unless it is that none of them ever ven-ture upon the patches of scarlet sward whichdot the swamp.

When morning broke they were still there,walking about as in a circle, but always justbeyond the edge of the sward. A more terri-fying aggregation of fierce and blood-thirstymonsters it would be difficult to imagine.

Singly and in pairs they commenced wan-dering off into the jungle shortly after sunrise,and when the last of them had departed Woolaand I resumed our journey.

Occasionally we caught glimpses of horridbeasts all during the day; but, fortunately, wewere never far from a sward island, and whenthey saw us their pursuit always ended at theverge of the solid sod.

Toward noon we stumbled upon a well-constructed road running in the general direc-tion we had been pursuing. Everything aboutthis highway marked it as the work of skilledengineers, and I was confident, from the indi-cations of antiquity which it bore, as well asfrom the very evident signs of its being still ineveryday use, that it must lead to one of the


principal cities of Kaol.Just as we entered it from one side a huge

monster emerged from the jungle upon theother, and at sight of us charged madly in ourdirection.

Imagine, if you can, a bald-faced hornetof your earthly experience grown to the sizeof a prize Hereford bull, and you will havesome faint conception of the ferocious appear-ance and awesome formidability of the wingedmonster that bore down upon me.

Frightful jaws in front and mighty, poi-soned sting behind made my relatively punylong-sword seem a pitiful weapon of defenseindeed. Nor could I hope to escape thelightning-like movements or hide from thosemyriad facet eyes which covered three-fourthsof the hideous head, permitting the creatureto see in all directions at one and the sametime.

Even my powerful and ferocious Woola wasas helpless as a kitten before that frightfulthing. But to flee were useless, even had itever been to my liking to turn my back upon adanger; so I stood my ground, Woola snarlingat my side, my only hope to die as I had alwayslived—fighting.

The creature was upon us now, and at theinstant there seemed to me a single slightchance for victory. If I could but remove theterrible menace of certain death hidden in thepoison sacs that fed the sting the strugglewould be less unequal.

At the thought I called to Woola to leapupon the creature’s head and hang there, and


as his mighty jaws closed upon that fiendishface, and glistening fangs buried themselvesin the bone and cartilage and lower part ofone of the huge eyes, I dived beneath the greatbody as the creature rose, dragging Woolafrom the ground, that it might bring its stingbeneath and pierce the body of the thing hang-ing to its head.

To put myself in the path of that poison-laden lance was to court instant death, butit was the only way; and as the thing shotlightning-like toward me I swung my long-sword in a terrific cut that severed the deadlymember close to the gorgeously marked body.

Then, like a battering-ram, one of the pow-erful hind legs caught me full in the chest andhurled me, half stunned and wholly winded,clear across the broad highway and into theunderbrush of the jungle that fringes it.

Fortunately, I passed between the boles oftrees; had I struck one of them I should havebeen badly injured, if not killed, so swiftly hadI been catapulted by that enormous hind leg.

Dazed though I was, I stumbled to my feetand staggered back to Woola’s assistance, tofind his savage antagonist circling ten feetabove the ground, beating madly at the cling-ing calot with all six powerful legs.

Even during my sudden flight through theair I had not once released my grip upon mylong-sword, and now I ran beneath the twobattling monsters, jabbing the winged terrorrepeatedly with its sharp point.

The thing might easily have risen out ofmy reach, but evidently it knew as little con-


cerning retreat in the face of danger as ei-ther Woola or I, for it dropped quickly towardme, and before I could escape had grasped myshoulder between its powerful jaws.

Time and again the now useless stub of itsgiant sting struck futilely against my body,but the blows alone were almost as effectiveas the kick of a horse; so that when I sayfutilely, I refer only to the natural functionof the disabled member—eventually the thingwould have hammered me to a pulp. Nor wasit far from accomplishing this when an inter-ruption occurred that put an end forever to itshostilities.

From where I hung a few feet above theroad I could see along the highway a few hun-dred yards to where it turned toward the east,and just as I had about given up all hope ofescaping the perilous position in which I nowwas I saw a red warrior come into view fromaround the bend.

He was mounted on a splendid thoat, oneof the smaller species used by red men, and inhis hand was a wondrous long, light lance.

His mount was walking sedately when Ifirst perceived them, but the instant that thered man’s eyes fell upon us a word to the thoatbrought the animal at full charge down uponus. The long lance of the warrior dipped to-ward us, and as thoat and rider hurtled be-neath, the point passed through the body ofour antagonist.

With a convulsive shudder the thing stiff-ened, the jaws relaxed, dropping me to theground, and then, careening once in mid


air, the creature plunged headforemost to theroad, full upon Woola, who still clung tena-ciously to its gory head.

By the time I had regained my feet the redman had turned and ridden back to us. Woola,finding his enemy inert and lifeless, releasedhis hold at my command and wriggled frombeneath the body that had covered him, andtogether we faced the warrior looking downupon us.

I started to thank the stranger for histimely assistance, but he cut me off peremp-torily.

“Who are you,” he asked, “who dare enterthe land of Kaol and hunt in the royal forestof the jeddak?”

Then, as he noted my white skin throughthe coating of grime and blood that coveredme, his eyes went wide and in an altered tonehe whispered: “Can it be that you are a HolyThern?”

I might have deceived the fellow for a time,as I had deceived others, but I had cast awaythe yellow wig and the holy diadem in thepresence of Matai Shang, and I knew that itwould not be long ere my new acquaintancediscovered that I was no thern at all.

“I am not a thern,” I replied, and then,flinging caution to the winds, I said: “I amJohn Carter, Prince of Helium, whose namemay not be entirely unknown to you.”

If his eyes had gone wide when he thoughtthat I was a Holy Thern, they fairly poppednow that he knew that I was John Carter. Igrasped my long-sword more firmly as I spoke


the words which I was sure would precipitatean attack, but to my surprise they precipi-tated nothing of the kind.

“John Carter, Prince of Helium,” he re-peated slowly, as though he could not quitegrasp the truth of the statement. “JohnCarter, the mightiest warrior of Barsoom!”

And then he dismounted and placed hishand upon my shoulder after the manner ofmost friendly greeting upon Mars.

“It is my duty, and it should be my plea-sure, to kill you, John Carter,” he said, “butalways in my heart of hearts have I admiredyour prowess and believed in your sinceritythe while I have questioned and disbelievedthe therns and their religion.

“It would mean my instant death were myheresy to be suspected in the court of KulanTith, but if I may serve you, Prince, you havebut to command Torkar Bar, Dwar of the Kao-lian Road.”

Truth and honesty were writ large uponthe warrior’s noble countenance, so that Icould not but have trusted him, enemy thoughhe should have been. His title of Captain ofthe Kaolian Road explained his timely pres-ence in the heart of the savage forest, forevery highway upon Barsoom is patrolled bydoughty warriors of the noble class, nor isthere any service more honorable than thislonely and dangerous duty in the less fre-quented sections of the domains of the redmen of Barsoom.

“Torkar Bar has already placed a greatdebt of gratitude upon my shoulders,” I


replied, pointing to the carcass of the creaturefrom whose heart he was dragging his longspear.

The red man smiled.“It was fortunate that I came when I did,”

he said. “Only this poisoned spear prickingthe very heart of a sith can kill it quicklyenough to save its prey. In this section of Kaolwe are all armed with a long sith spear, whosepoint is smeared with the poison of the crea-ture it is intended to kill; no other virus actsso quickly upon the beast as its own.

“Look,” he continued, drawing his daggerand making an incision in the carcass a footabove the root of the sting, from which hepresently drew forth two sacs, each of whichheld fully a gallon of the deadly liquid.

“Thus we maintain our supply, thoughwere it not for certain commercial uses towhich the virus is put, it would scarcely benecessary to add to our present store, sincethe sith is almost extinct.

“Only occasionally do we now run uponone. Of old, however, Kaol was overrunwith the frightful monsters that often camein herds of twenty or thirty, darting downfrom above into our cities and carrying awaywomen, children, and even warriors.”

As he spoke I had been wondering just howmuch I might safely tell this man of the mis-sion which brought me to his land, but hisnext words anticipated the broaching of thesubject on my part, and rendered me thankfulthat I had not spoken too soon.

“And now as to yourself, John Carter,” he


said, “I shall not ask your business here, nordo I wish to hear it. I have eyes and ears andordinary intelligence, and yesterday morningI saw the party that came to the city of Kaolfrom the north in a small flier. But onething I ask of you, and that is: the word ofJohn Carter that he contemplates no overt actagainst either the nation of Kaol or its jed-dak.”

“You may have my word as to that, TorkarBar,” I replied.

“My way leads along the Kaolian road,away from the city of Kaol,” he continued. “Ihave seen no one—John Carter least of all.Nor have you seen Torkar Bar, nor ever heardof him. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” I replied.He laid his hand upon my shoulder.“This road leads directly into the city of

Kaol,” he said. “I wish you fortune,” and vault-ing to the back of his thoat he trotted awaywithout even a backward glance.

It was after dark when Woola and I spiedthrough the mighty forest the great wallwhich surrounds the city of Kaol.

We had traversed the entire way withoutmishap or adventure, and though the few wehad met had eyed the great calot wonderingly,none had pierced the red pigment with whichI had smoothly smeared every square inch ofmy body.

But to traverse the surrounding coun-try, and to enter the guarded city of KulanTith, Jeddak of Kaol, were two very differentthings. No man enters a Martian city with-


out giving a very detailed and satisfactory ac-count of himself, nor did I delude myself withthe belief that I could for a moment imposeupon the acumen of the officers of the guardto whom I should be taken the moment I ap-plied at any one of the gates.

My only hope seemed to lie in entering thecity surreptitiously under cover of the dark-ness, and once in, trust to my own wits to hidemyself in some crowded quarter where detec-tion would be less liable to occur.

With this idea in view I circled the greatwall, keeping within the fringe of the forest,which is cut away for a short distance fromthe wall all about the city, that no enemy mayutilize the trees as a means of ingress.

Several times I attempted to scale thebarrier at different points, but not even myearthly muscles could overcome that cleverlyconstructed rampart. To a height of thirty feetthe face of the wall slanted outward, and thenfor almost an equal distance it was perpendic-ular, above which it slanted in again for somefifteen feet to the crest.

And smooth! Polished glass could not bemore so. Finally I had to admit that at lastI had discovered a Barsoomian fortificationwhich I could not negotiate.

Discouraged, I withdrew into the forest be-side a broad highway which entered the cityfrom the east, and with Woola beside me laydown to sleep.

A HERO IN KAOL

It was daylight when I was awakened by thesound of stealthy movement near by.

As I opened my eyes Woola, too, movedand, coming up to his haunches, staredthrough the intervening brush toward theroad, each hair upon his neck stiffly erect.

At first I could see nothing, but presently Icaught a glimpse of a bit of smooth and glossygreen moving among the scarlet and purpleand yellow of the vegetation.

Motioning Woola to remain quietly wherehe was, I crept forward to investigate, andfrom behind the bole of a great tree I saw along line of the hideous green warriors of thedead sea bottoms hiding in the dense junglebeside the road.

As far as I could see, the silent line of de-struction and death stretched away from thecity of Kaol. There could be but one explana-tion. The green men were expecting an exodusof a body of red troops from the nearest citygate, and they were lying there in ambush toleap upon them.

I owed no fealty to the Jeddak of Kaol, buthe was of the same race of noble red men

81


as my own princess, and I would not standsupinely by and see his warriors butchered bythe cruel and heartless demons of the wasteplaces of Barsoom.

Cautiously I retraced my steps to where Ihad left Woola, and warning him to silence,signaled him to follow me. Making a consider-able detour to avoid the chance of falling intothe hands of the green men, I came at last tothe great wall.

A hundred yards to my right was the gatefrom which the troops were evidently expectedto issue, but to reach it I must pass the flank ofthe green warriors within easy sight of them,and, fearing that my plan to warn the Kao-lians might thus be thwarted, I decided uponhastening toward the left, where another gatea mile away would give me ingress to the city.

I knew that the word I brought wouldprove a splendid passport to Kaol, and I mustadmit that my caution was due more to my ar-dent desire to make my way into the city thanto avoid a brush with the green men. As muchas I enjoy a fight, I cannot always indulge my-self, and just now I had more weighty mattersto occupy my time than spilling the blood ofstrange warriors.

Could I but win beyond the city’s wall,there might be opportunity in the confusionand excitement which were sure to follow myannouncement of an invading force of greenwarriors to find my way within the palace ofthe jeddak, where I was sure Matai Shang andhis party would be quartered.

But scarcely had I taken a hundred steps

A HERO IN KAOL 83

in the direction of the farther gate when thesound of marching troops, the clank of metal,and the squealing of thoats just within thecity apprised me of the fact that the Kaolianswere already moving toward the other gate.

There was no time to be lost. In anothermoment the gate would be opened and thehead of the column pass out upon the death-bordered highway.

Turning back toward the fateful gate, I ranrapidly along the edge of the clearing, takingthe ground in the mighty leaps that had firstmade me famous upon Barsoom. Thirty, fifty,a hundred feet at a bound are nothing for themuscles of an athletic Earth man upon Mars.

As I passed the flank of the waiting greenmen they saw my eyes turned upon them, andin an instant, knowing that all secrecy was atan end, those nearest me sprang to their feetin an effort to cut me off before I could reachthe gate.

At the same instant the mighty portalswung wide and the head of the Kaolian col-umn emerged. A dozen green warriors hadsucceeded in reaching a point between me andthe gate, but they had but little idea who itwas they had elected to detain.

I did not slacken my speed an iota as Idashed among them, and as they fell beforemy blade I could not but recall the happymemory of those other battles when TarsTarkas, Jeddak of Thark, mightiest of Mar-tian green men, had stood shoulder to shoul-der with me through long, hot Martian days,as together we hewed down our enemies until


the pile of corpses about us rose higher than atall man’s head.

When several pressed me too closely, therebefore the carved gateway of Kaol, I leapedabove their heads, and fashioning my tacticsafter those of the hideous plant men of Dor,struck down upon my enemies’ heads as Ipassed above them.

From the city the red warriors were rush-ing toward us, and from the jungle the sav-age horde of green men were coming to meetthem. In a moment I was in the very centerof as fierce and bloody a battle as I had everpassed through.

These Kaolians are most noble fighters,nor are the green men of the equator one whitless warlike than their cold, cruel cousins ofthe temperate zone. There were many timeswhen either side might have withdrawn with-out dishonor and thus ended hostilities, butfrom the mad abandon with which each in-variably renewed hostilities I soon came tobelieve that what need not have been morethan a trifling skirmish would end only withthe complete extermination of one force or theother.

With the joy of battle once roused withinme, I took keen delight in the fray, and thatmy fighting was noted by the Kaolians wasoften evidenced by the shouts of applause di-rected at me.

If I sometimes seem to take too great pridein my fighting ability, it must be rememberedthat fighting is my vocation. If your vocationbe shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and

A HERO IN KAOL 85

you can do one or the other better than yourfellows, then you are a fool if you are not proudof your ability. And so I am very proud thatupon two planets no greater fighter has everlived than John Carter, Prince of Helium.

And I outdid myself that day to impressthe fact upon the natives of Kaol, for I wishedto win a way into their hearts—and their city.Nor was I to be disappointed in my desire.

All day we fought, until the road was redwith blood and clogged with corpses. Back andforth along the slippery highway the tide ofbattle surged, but never once was the gatewayto Kaol really in danger.

There were breathing spells when I had achance to converse with the red men besidewhom I fought, and once the jeddak, KulanTith himself, laid his hand upon my shoulderand asked my name.

“I am Dotar Sojat,” I replied, recalling aname given me by the Tharks many years be-fore, from the surnames of the first two oftheir warriors I had killed, which is the cus-tom among them.

“You are a mighty warrior, Dotar Sojat,” hereplied, “and when this day is done I shallspeak with you again in the great audiencechamber.”

And then the fight surged upon us oncemore and we were separated, but my heart’sdesire was attained, and it was with renewedvigor and a joyous soul that I laid about mewith my long-sword until the last of the greenmen had had enough and had withdrawn to-ward their distant sea bottom.


Not until the battle was over did I learnwhy the red troops had sallied forth that day.It seemed that Kulan Tith was expecting avisit from a mighty jeddak of the north—apowerful and the only ally of the Kaolians,and it had been his wish to meet his guest afull day’s journey from Kaol.

But now the march of the welcominghost was delayed until the following morning,when the troops again set out from Kaol. Ihad not been bidden to the presence of KulanTith after the battle, but he had sent an officerto find me and escort me to comfortable quar-ters in that part of the palace set aside for theofficers of the royal guard.

There, with Woola, I had spent a comfort-able night, and rose much refreshed after thearduous labors of the past few days. Woolahad fought with me through the battle of theprevious day, true to the instincts and train-ing of a Martian war dog, great numbers ofwhich are often to be found with the savagegreen hordes of the dead sea bottoms.

Neither of us had come through the conflictunscathed, but the marvelous, healing salvesof Barsoom had sufficed, overnight, to makeus as good as new.

I breakfasted with a number of the Kao-lian officers, whom I found as courteous anddelightful hosts as even the nobles of Helium,who are renowned for their ease of mannersand excellence of breeding. The meal wasscarcely concluded when a messenger arrivedfrom Kulan Tith summoning me before him.

As I entered the royal presence the jeddak

A HERO IN KAOL 87

rose, and stepping from the dais which sup-ported his magnificent throne, came forwardto meet me—a mark of distinction that is sel-dom accorded to other than a visiting ruler.

“Kaor, Dotar Sojat!” he greeted me. “I havesummoned you to receive the grateful thanksof the people of Kaol, for had it not been foryour heroic bravery in daring fate to warnus of the ambuscade we must surely havefallen into the well-laid trap. Tell me moreof yourself—from what country you come, andwhat errand brings you to the court of KulanTith.”

“I am from Hastor,” I said, for in truth Ihad a small palace in that southern city whichlies within the far-flung dominions of the He-liumetic nation.

“My presence in the land of Kaol is partlydue to accident, my flier being wrecked uponthe southern fringe of your great forest. It waswhile seeking entrance to the city of Kaol thatI discovered the green horde lying in wait foryour troops.”

If Kulan Tith wondered what businessbrought me in a flier to the very edge of hisdomain he was good enough not to press mefurther for an explanation, which I should in-deed have had difficulty in rendering.

During my audience with the jeddak an-other party entered the chamber from behindme, so that I did not see their faces until Ku-lan Tith stepped past me to greet them, com-manding me to follow and be presented.

As I turned toward them it was with diffi-culty that I controlled my features, for there,


listening to Kulan Tith’s eulogistic words con-cerning me, stood my arch-enemies, MataiShang and Thurid.

“Holy Hekkador of the Holy Therns,” thejeddak was saying, “shower thy blessingsupon Dotar Sojat, the valorous stranger fromdistant Hastor, whose wondrous heroism andmarvelous ferocity saved the day for Kaol yes-terday.”

Matai Shang stepped forward and laid hishand upon my shoulder. No slightest indica-tion that he recognized me showed upon hiscountenance—my disguise was evidently com-plete.

He spoke kindly to me and then presentedme to Thurid. The black, too, was evidentlyentirely deceived. Then Kulan Tith regaledthem, much to my amusement, with details ofmy achievements upon the field of battle.

The thing that seemed to have impressedhim most was my remarkable agility, and timeand again he described the wondrous way inwhich I had leaped completely over an antag-onist, cleaving his skull wide open with mylong-sword as I passed above him.

I thought that I saw Thurid’s eyes widena bit during the narrative, and several timesI surprised him gazing intently into my facethrough narrowed lids. Was he commencingto suspect? And then Kulan Tith told of thesavage calot that fought beside me, and af-ter that I saw suspicion in the eyes of MataiShang—or did I but imagine it?

At the close of the audience Kulan Tith an-nounced that he would have me accompany

A HERO IN KAOL 89

him upon the way to meet his royal guest, andas I departed with an officer who was to pro-cure proper trappings and a suitable mountfor me, both Matai Shang and Thurid seemedmost sincere in professing their pleasure athaving had an opportunity to know me. It waswith a sigh of relief that I quitted the cham-ber, convinced that nothing more than a guiltyconscience had prompted my belief that eitherof my enemies suspected my true identity.

A half-hour later I rode out of the citygate with the column that accompanied Ku-lan Tith upon the way to meet his friend andally. Though my eyes and ears had been wideopen during my audience with the jeddak andmy various passages through the palace, I hadseen or heard nothing of Dejah Thoris or Thu-via of Ptarth. That they must be somewherewithin the great rambling edifice I was pos-itive, and I should have given much to havefound a way to remain behind during KulanTith’s absence, that I might search for them.

Toward noon we came in touch with thehead of the column we had set out to meet.

It was a gorgeous train that accompaniedthe visiting jeddak, and for miles it stretchedalong the wide, white road to Kaol. Mountedtroops, their trappings of jewel and metal-incrusted leather glistening in the sunlight,formed the vanguard of the body, and thencame a thousand gorgeous chariots drawn byhuge zitidars.

These low, commodious wagons moved twoabreast, and on either side of them marchedsolid ranks of mounted warriors, for in the


chariots were the women and children of theroyal court. Upon the back of each monsterzitidar rode a Martian youth, and the wholescene carried me back to my first days uponBarsoom, now twenty-two years in the past,when I had first beheld the gorgeous specta-cle of a caravan of the green horde of Tharks.

Never before today had I seen zitidars inthe service of red men. These brutes are hugemastodonian animals that tower to an im-mense height even beside the giant green menand their giant thoats; but when compared tothe relatively small red man and his breed ofthoats they assume Brobdingnagian propor-tions that are truly appalling.

The beasts were hung with jeweled trap-pings and saddlepads of gay silk, embroideredin fanciful designs with strings of diamonds,pearls, rubies, emeralds, and the countlessunnamed jewels of Mars, while from eachchariot rose a dozen standards from whichstreamers, flags, and pennons fluttered in thebreeze.

Just in front of the chariots the vis-iting jeddak rode alone upon a purewhite thoat—another unusual sight uponBarsoom—and after them came interminableranks of mounted spearmen, riflemen, andswordsmen. It was indeed a most imposingsight.

Except for the clanking of accoutrementsand the occasional squeal of an angry thoator the low guttural of a zitidar, the passageof the cavalcade was almost noiseless, for nei-ther thoat nor zitidar is a hoofed animal, and

A HERO IN KAOL 91

the broad tires of the chariots are of an elasticcomposition, which gives forth no sound.

Now and then the gay laughter of a womanor the chatter of children could be heard, forthe red Martians are a social, pleasure-lovingpeople—in direct antithesis to the cold andmorbid race of green men.

The forms and ceremonials connected withthe meeting of the two jeddaks consumed anhour, and then we turned and retraced ourway toward the city of Kaol, which the head ofthe column reached just before dark, thoughit must have been nearly morning before therear guard passed through the gateway.

Fortunately, I was well up toward the headof the column, and after the great banquet,which I attended with the officers of the royalguard, I was free to seek repose. There was somuch activity and bustle about the palace allduring the night with the constant arrival ofthe noble officers of the visiting jeddak’s ret-inue that I dared not attempt to prosecute asearch for Dejah Thoris, and so, as soon as itwas seemly for me to do so, I returned to myquarters.

As I passed along the corridors betweenthe banquet hall and the apartments that hadbeen allotted me, I had a sudden feeling that Iwas under surveillance, and, turning quicklyin my tracks, caught a glimpse of a figurewhich darted into an open doorway the in-stant I wheeled about.

Though I ran quickly back to the spotwhere the shadower had disappeared I couldfind no trace of him, yet in the brief glimpse


that I had caught I could have sworn that Ihad seen a white face surmounted by a massof yellow hair.

The incident gave me considerable food forspeculation, since if I were right in the conclu-sion induced by the cursory glimpse I had hadof the spy, then Matai Shang and Thurid mustsuspect my identity, and if that were true noteven the service I had rendered Kulan Tithcould save me from his religious fanaticism.

But never did vague conjecture or fruitlessfears for the future lie with sufficient weightupon my mind to keep me from my rest, and sotonight I threw myself upon my sleeping silksand furs and passed at once into dreamlessslumber.

Calots are not permitted within the wallsof the palace proper, and so I had had to rel-egate poor Woola to quarters in the stableswhere the royal thoats are kept. He hadcomfortable, even luxurious apartments, but Iwould have given much to have had him withme; and if he had been, the thing which hap-pened that night would not have come to pass.

I could not have slept over a quarter of anhour when I was suddenly awakened by thepassing of some cold and clammy thing acrossmy forehead. Instantly I sprang to my feet,clutching in the direction I thought the pres-ence lay. For an instant my hand touchedagainst human flesh, and then, as I lungedheadforemost through the darkness to seizemy nocturnal visitor, my foot became entan-gled in my sleeping silks and I fell sprawlingto the floor.

A HERO IN KAOL 93

By the time I had resumed my feet andfound the button which controlled the lightmy caller had disappeared. Careful search ofthe room revealed nothing to explain eitherthe identity or business of the person who hadthus secretly sought me in the dead of night.

That the purpose might be theft I couldnot believe, since thieves are practically un-known upon Barsoom. Assassination, how-ever, is rampant, but even this could not havebeen the motive of my stealthy friend, for hemight easily have killed me had he desired.

I had about given up fruitless conjectureand was on the point of returning to sleepwhen a dozen Kaolian guardsmen entered myapartment. The officer in charge was one ofmy genial hosts of the morning, but now uponhis face was no sign of friendship.

“Kulan Tith commands your presence be-fore him,” he said. “Come!”

NEW ALLIES

Surrounded by guardsmen I marched backalong the corridors of the palace of KulanTith, Jeddak of Kaol, to the great audiencechamber in the center of the massive struc-ture.

As I entered the brilliantly lighted apart-ment, filled with the nobles of Kaol and theofficers of the visiting jeddak, all eyes wereturned upon me. Upon the great dais at theend of the chamber stood three thrones, uponwhich sat Kulan Tith and his two guests,Matai Shang, and the visiting jeddak.

Up the broad center aisle we marched be-neath deadly silence, and at the foot of thethrones we halted.

“Prefer thy charge,” said Kulan Tith, turn-ing to one who stood among the nobles at hisright; and then Thurid, the black dator of theFirst Born, stepped forward and faced me.

“Most noble Jeddak,” he said, addressingKulan Tith, “from the first I suspected thisstranger within thy palace. Your descriptionof his fiendish prowess tallied with that of thearch-enemy of truth upon Barsoom.

“But that there might be no mistake I

95


despatched a priest of your own holy cult tomake the test that should pierce his disguiseand reveal the truth. Behold the result!” andThurid pointed a rigid finger at my forehead.

All eyes followed the direction of that ac-cusing digit—I alone seemed at a loss to guesswhat fatal sign rested upon my brow.

The officer beside me guessed my perplex-ity; and as the brows of Kulan Tith darkenedin a menacing scowl as his eyes rested uponme, the noble drew a small mirror from hispocket-pouch and held it before my face.

One glance at the reflection it gave back tome was sufficient.

From my forehead the hand of the sneak-ing thern had reached out through the con-cealing darkness of my bed-chamber andwiped away a patch of the disguising red pig-ment as broad as my palm. Beneath showedthe tanned texture of my own white skin.

For a moment Thurid ceased speaking, toenhance, I suspect, the dramatic effect of hisdisclosure. Then he resumed.

“Here, O Kulan Tith,” he cried, “is he whohas desecrated the temples of the Gods ofMars, who has violated the persons of theHoly Therns themselves and turned a worldagainst its age-old religion. Before you, inyour power, Jeddak of Kaol, Defender of theHolies, stands John Carter, Prince of Helium!”

Kulan Tith looked toward Matai Shang asthough for corroboration of these charges. TheHoly Thern nodded his head.

“It is indeed the arch-blasphemer,” he said.“Even now he has followed me to the very

NEW ALLIES 97

heart of thy palace, Kulan Tith, for the solepurpose of assassinating me. He—”

“He lies!” I cried. “Kulan Tith, listen thatyou may know the truth. Listen while Itell you why John Carter has followed MataiShang to the heart of thy palace. Listen to meas well as to them, and then judge if my actsbe not more in accord with true Barsoomianchivalry and honor than those of these re-vengeful devotees of the spurious creeds fromwhose cruel bonds I have freed your planet.”

“Silence!” roared the jeddak, leaping to hisfeet and laying his hand upon the hilt of hissword. “Silence, blasphemer! Kulan Tith neednot permit the air of his audience chamber tobe defiled by the heresies that issue from yourpolluted throat to judge you.

“You stand already self-condemned. It butremains to determine the manner of yourdeath. Even the service that you rendered thearms of Kaol shall avail you naught; it wasbut a base subterfuge whereby you might winyour way into my favor and reach the side ofthis holy man whose life you craved. To thepits with him!” he concluded, addressing theofficer of my guard.

Here was a pretty pass, indeed! Whatchance had I against a whole nation? Whathope for me of mercy at the hands of the fanat-ical Kulan Tith with such advisers as MataiShang and Thurid. The black grinned malev-olently in my face.

“You shall not escape this time, Earthman,” he taunted.

The guards closed toward me. A red haze


blurred my vision. The fighting blood of myVirginian sires coursed hot through my veins.The lust of battle in all its mad fury was uponme.

With a leap I was beside Thurid, and erethe devilish smirk had faded from his hand-some face I had caught him full upon themouth with my clenched fist; and as the good,old American blow landed, the black datorshot back a dozen feet, to crumple in a heap atthe foot of Kulan Tith’s throne, spitting bloodand teeth from his hurt mouth.

Then I drew my sword and swung round,on guard, to face a nation.

In an instant the guardsmen were uponme, but before a blow had been struck amighty voice rose above the din of shoutingwarriors, and a giant figure leaped from thedais beside Kulan Tith and, with drawn long-sword, threw himself between me and my ad-versaries.

It was the visiting jeddak.“Hold!” he cried. “If you value my friend-

ship, Kulan Tith, and the age-old peace thathas existed between our peoples, call off yourswordsmen; for wherever or against whom-soever fights John Carter, Prince of Helium,there beside him and to the death fights Thu-van Dihn, Jeddak of Ptarth.”

The shouting ceased and the menacingpoints were lowered as a thousand eyesturned first toward Thuvan Dihn in surpriseand then toward Kulan Tith in question. Atfirst the Jeddak of Kaol went white in rage,but before he spoke he had mastered himself,

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so that his tone was calm and even as befittedintercourse between two great jeddaks.

“Thuvan Dihn,” he said slowly, “must havegreat provocation thus to desecrate the an-cient customs which inspire the deportmentof a guest within the palace of his host. LestI, too, should forget myself as has my royalfriend, I should prefer to remain silent untilthe Jeddak of Ptarth has won from me ap-plause for his action by relating the causeswhich provoked it.”

I could see that the Jeddak of Ptarth was ofhalf a mind to throw his metal in Kulan Tith’sface, but he controlled himself even as well ashad his host.

“None knows better than Thuvan Dihn,”he said, “the laws which govern the acts ofmen in the domains of their neighbors; butThuvan Dihn owes allegiance to a higher lawthan these—the law of gratitude. Nor to anyman upon Barsoom does he owe a greater debtof gratitude than to John Carter, Prince of He-lium.

“Years ago, Kulan Tith,” he continued,“upon the occasion of your last visit to me,you were greatly taken with the charms andgraces of my only daughter, Thuvia. You sawhow I adored her, and later you learned that,inspired by some unfathomable whim, shehad taken the last, long, voluntary pilgrim-age upon the cold bosom of the mysterious Iss,leaving me desolate.

“Some months ago I first heard of the expe-dition which John Carter had led against Is-sus and the Holy Therns. Faint rumors of the


atrocities reported to have been committed bythe therns upon those who for countless ageshave floated down the mighty Iss came to myears.

“I heard that thousands of prisoners hadbeen released, few of whom dared to returnto their own countries owing to the mandateof terrible death which rests against all whoreturn from the Valley Dor.

“For a time I could not believe the heresieswhich I heard, and I prayed that my daughterThuvia might have died before she ever com-mitted the sacrilege of returning to the outerworld. But then my father’s love asserted it-self, and I vowed that I would prefer eternaldamnation to further separation from her ifshe could be found.

“So I sent emissaries to Helium, and to thecourt of Xodar, Jeddak of the First Born, andto him who now rules those of the thern na-tion that have renounced their religion; andfrom each and all I heard the same story of un-speakable cruelties and atrocities perpetratedupon the poor defenseless victims of their re-ligion by the Holy Therns.

“Many there were who had seen or knownmy daughter, and from therns who had beenclose to Matai Shang I learned of the indigni-ties that he personally heaped upon her; and Iwas glad when I came here to find that MataiShang was also your guest, for I should havesought him out had it taken a lifetime.

“More, too, I heard, and that of the chival-rous kindness that John Carter had accordedmy daughter. They told me how he fought for

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her and rescued her, and how he spurned es-cape from the savage Warhoons of the south,sending her to safety upon his own thoat andremaining upon foot to meet the green war-riors.

“Can you wonder, Kulan Tith, that I amwilling to jeopardize my life, the peace of mynation, or even your friendship, which I prizemore than aught else, to champion the Princeof Helium?”

For a moment Kulan Tith was silent. Icould see by the expression of his face that hewas sore perplexed. Then he spoke.

“Thuvan Dihn,” he said, and his tone wasfriendly though sad, “who am I to judge myfellow-man? In my eyes the Father of Thernsis still holy, and the religion which he teachesthe only true religion, but were I faced bythe same problem that has vexed you I doubtnot that I should feel and act precisely as youhave.

“In so far as the Prince of Helium is con-cerned I may act, but between you and MataiShang my only office can be one of concilia-tion. The Prince of Helium shall be escortedin safety to the boundary of my domain erethe sun has set again, where he shall be freeto go whither he will; but upon pain of deathmust he never again enter the land of Kaol.

“If there be a quarrel between you andthe Father of Therns, I need not ask that thesettlement of it be deferred until both havepassed beyond the limits of my power. Are yousatisfied, Thuvan Dihn?”

The Jeddak of Ptarth nodded his as-


sent, but the ugly scowl that he bent uponMatai Shang harbored ill for that pasty-facedgodling.

“The Prince of Helium is far from satis-fied,” I cried, breaking rudely in upon the be-ginnings of peace, for I had no stomach forpeace at the price that had been named.

“I have escaped death in a dozen forms tofollow Matai Shang and overtake him, and Ido not intend to be led, like a decrepit thoatto the slaughter, from the goal that I havewon by the prowess of my sword arm and themight of my muscles.

“Nor will Thuvan Dihn, Jeddak of Ptarth,be satisfied when he has heard me through.Do you know why I have followed MataiShang and Thurid, the black dator, from theforests of the Valley Dor across half a worldthrough almost insurmountable difficulties?

“Think you that John Carter, Prince of He-lium, would stoop to assassination? Can Ku-lan Tith be such a fool as to believe that lie,whispered in his ear by the Holy Thern or Da-tor Thurid?

“I do not follow Matai Shang to kill him,though the God of mine own planet knowsthat my hands itch to be at his throat. I followhim, Thuvan Dihn, because with him are twoprisoners—my wife, Dejah Thoris, Princess ofHelium, and your daughter, Thuvia of Ptarth.

“Now think you that I shall permit myselfto be led beyond the walls of Kaol unless themother of my son accompanies me, and thydaughter be restored?”

Thuvan Dihn turned upon Kulan Tith.

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Rage flamed in his keen eyes; but by the mas-terfulness of his self-control he kept his toneslevel as he spoke.

“Knew you this thing, Kulan Tith?” heasked. “Knew you that my daughter lay aprisoner in your palace?”

“He could not know it,” interrupted MataiShang, white with what I am sure was morefear than rage. “He could not know it, for it isa lie.”

I would have had his life for that upon thespot, but even as I sprang toward him ThuvanDihn laid a heavy hand upon my shoulder.

“Wait,” he said to me, and then to Ku-lan Tith. “It is not a lie. This much have Ilearned of the Prince of Helium—he does notlie. Answer me, Kulan Tith—I have asked youa question.”

“Three women came with the Father ofTherns,” replied Kulan Tith. “Phaidor, hisdaughter, and two who were reported to beher slaves. If these be Thuvia of Ptarth andDejah Thoris of Helium I did not know it—Ihave seen neither. But if they be, then shallthey be returned to you on the morrow.”

As he spoke he looked straight at MataiShang, not as a devotee should look at a highpriest, but as a ruler of men looks at one towhom he issues a command.

It must have been plain to the Father ofTherns, as it was to me, that the recent disclo-sures of his true character had done much al-ready to weaken the faith of Kulan Tith, andthat it would require but little more to turnthe powerful jeddak into an avowed enemy;


but so strong are the seeds of superstition thateven the great Kaolian still hesitated to cutthe final strand that bound him to his ancientreligion.

Matai Shang was wise enough to seemto accept the mandate of his follower, andpromised to bring the two slave women to theaudience chamber on the morrow.

“It is almost morning now,” he said, “andI should dislike to break in upon the slumberof my daughter, or I would have them fetchedat once that you might see that the Prince ofHelium is mistaken,” and he emphasized thelast word in an effort to affront me so subtilelythat I could not take open offense.

I was about to object to any delay, and de-mand that the Princess of Helium be broughtto me forthwith, when Thuvan Dihn madesuch insistence seem unnecessary.

“I should like to see my daughter at once,”he said, “but if Kulan Tith will give mehis assurance that none will be permitted toleave the palace this night, and that no harmshall befall either Dejah Thoris or Thuvia ofPtarth between now and the moment they arebrought into our presence in this chamber atdaylight I shall not insist.”

“None shall leave the palace tonight,”replied the Jeddak of Kaol, “and Matai Shangwill give us assurance that no harm will cometo the two women?”

The thern assented with a nod. A few mo-ments later Kulan Tith indicated that the au-dience was at an end, and at Thuvan Dihn’sinvitation I accompanied the Jeddak of Ptarth

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to his own apartments, where we sat untildaylight, while he listened to the account ofmy experiences upon his planet and to all thathad befallen his daughter during the timethat we had been together.

I found the father of Thuvia a man aftermy own heart, and that night saw the begin-ning of a friendship which has grown until itis second only to that which obtains betweenTars Tarkas, the green Jeddak of Thark, andmyself.

The first burst of Mars’s sudden dawnbrought messengers from Kulan Tith, sum-moning us to the audience chamber whereThuvan Dihn was to receive his daughter af-ter years of separation, and I was to be re-united with the glorious daughter of Heliumafter an almost unbroken separation of twelveyears.

My heart pounded within my bosom un-til I looked about me in embarrassment, sosure was I that all within the room must hear.My arms ached to enfold once more the divineform of her whose eternal youth and undyingbeauty were but outward manifestations of aperfect soul.

At last the messenger despatched to fetchMatai Shang returned. I craned my neck tocatch the first glimpse of those who should befollowing, but the messenger was alone.

Halting before the throne he addressed hisjeddak in a voice that was plainly audible toall within the chamber.

“O Kulan Tith, Mightiest of Jeddaks,” hecried, after the fashion of the court, “your mes-


senger returns alone, for when he reached theapartments of the Father of Therns he foundthem empty, as were those occupied by hissuite.”

Kulan Tith went white.A low groan burst from the lips of Thu-

van Dihn who stood next me, not having as-cended the throne which awaited him besidehis host. For a moment the silence of deathreigned in the great audience chamber of Ku-lan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. It was he who brokethe spell.

Rising from his throne he stepped downfrom the dais to the side of Thuvan Dihn.Tears dimmed his eyes as he placed both hishands upon the shoulders of his friend.

“O Thuvan Dihn,” he cried, “that thisshould have happened in the palace of thybest friend! With my own hands would I havewrung the neck of Matai Shang had I guessedwhat was in his foul heart. Last night my life-long faith was weakened—this morning it hasbeen shattered; but too late, too late.

“To wrest your daughter and the wife ofthis royal warrior from the clutches of thesearchfiends you have but to command the re-sources of a mighty nation, for all Kaol is atyour disposal. What may be done? Say theword!”

“First,” I suggested, “let us find those ofyour people who be responsible for the escapeof Matai Shang and his followers. Without as-sistance on the part of the palace guard thisthing could not have come to pass. Seek theguilty, and from them force an explanation of

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the manner of their going and the directionthey have taken.”

Before Kulan Tith could issue the com-mands that would initiate the investigation ahandsome young officer stepped forward andaddressed his jeddak.

“O Kulan Tith, Mightiest of Jeddaks,” hesaid, “I alone be responsible for this grievouserror. Last night it was I who commanded thepalace guard. I was on duty in other partsof the palace during the audience of the earlymorning, and knew nothing of what tran-spired then, so that when the Father of Th-erns summoned me and explained that it wasyour wish that his party be hastened from thecity because of the presence here of a deadlyenemy who sought the Holy Hekkador’s life Idid only what a lifetime of training has taughtme was the proper thing to do—I obeyed himwhom I believed to be the ruler of us all,mightier even than thou, mightiest of jeddaks.

“Let the consequences and the punishmentfall on me alone, for I alone am guilty. Thoseothers of the palace guard who assisted in theflight did so under my instructions.”

Kulan Tith looked first at me and then atThuvan Dihn, as though to ask our judgmentupon the man, but the error was so evidentlyexcusable that neither of us had any mind tosee the young officer suffer for a mistake thatany might readily have made.

“How left they,” asked Thuvan Dihn, “andwhat direction did they take?”

“They left as they came,” replied the offi-cer, “upon their own flier. For some time af-


ter they had departed I watched the vessel’slights, which vanished finally due north.”

“Where north could Matai Shang find anasylum?” asked Thuvan Dihn of Kulan Tith.

For some moments the Jeddak of Kaolstood with bowed head, apparently deep inthought. Then a sudden light brightened hiscountenance.

“I have it!” he cried. “Only yesterdayMatai Shang let drop a hint of his destina-tion, telling me of a race of people unlike our-selves who dwell far to the north. They, hesaid, had always been known to the Holy Th-erns and were devout and faithful followers ofthe ancient cult. Among them would he finda perpetual haven of refuge, where no ‘lyingheretics’ might seek him out. It is there thatMatai Shang has gone.”

“And in all Kaol there be no flier whereinto follow,” I cried.

“Nor nearer than Ptarth,” replied ThuvanDihn.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, “beyond the southernfringe of this great forest lies the wreck of thethern flier which brought me that far upon myway. If you will loan me men to fetch it, andartificers to assist me, I can repair it in twodays, Kulan Tith.”

I had been more than half suspicious ofthe seeming sincerity of the Kaolian jeddak’ssudden apostasy, but the alacrity with whichhe embraced my suggestion, and the despatchwith which a force of officers and men wereplaced at my disposal entirely removed thelast vestige of my doubts.

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Two days later the flier rested upon thetop of the watchtower, ready to depart. Thu-van Dihn and Kulan Tith had offered me theentire resources of two nations––millions offighting men were at my disposal; but myflier could hold but one other than myself andWoola.

As I stepped aboard her, Thuvan Dihn tookhis place beside me. I cast a look of question-ing surprise upon him. He turned to the high-est of his own officers who had accompaniedhim to Kaol.

“To you I entrust the return of my retinueto Ptarth,” he said. “There my son rules ablyin my absence. The Prince of Helium shall notgo alone into the land of his enemies. I havespoken. Farewell!”

THROUGH THECARRION CAVES

Straight toward the north, day and night,our destination compass led us after the flee-ing flier upon which it had remained setsince I first attuned it after leaving the thernfortress.

Early in the second night we noticed theair becoming perceptibly colder, and from thedistance we had come from the equator wereassured that we were rapidly approaching thenorth arctic region.

My knowledge of the efforts that had beenmade by countless expeditions to explore thatunknown land bade me to caution, for neverhad flier returned who had passed to anyconsiderable distance beyond the mighty ice-barrier that fringes the southern hem of thefrigid zone.

What became of them none knew—onlythat they passed forever out of the sight ofman into that grim and mysterious country ofthe pole.

The distance from the barrier to the polewas no more than a swift flier should cover

111


in a few hours, and so it was assumed thatsome frightful catastrophe awaited those whoreached the “forbidden land,” as it had come tobe called by the Martians of the outer world.

Thus it was that I went more slowly as weapproached the barrier, for it was my inten-tion to move cautiously by day over the ice-pack that I might discover, before I had runinto a trap, if there really lay an inhabitedcountry at the north pole, for there only couldI imagine a spot where Matai Shang mightfeel secure from John Carter, Prince of He-lium.

We were flying at a snail’s pace but afew feet above the ground—literally feelingour way along through the darkness, for bothmoons had set, and the night was black withthe clouds that are to be found only at Mars’stwo extremities.

Suddenly a towering wall of white rose di-rectly in our path, and though I threw thehelm hard over, and reversed our engine, Iwas too late to avoid collision. With a sicken-ing crash we struck the high looming obstaclethree-quarters on.

The flier reeled half over; the enginestopped; as one, the patched buoyancy tanksburst, and we plunged, headforemost, to theground twenty feet beneath.

Fortunately none of us was injured, andwhen we had disentangled ourselves fromthe wreckage, and the lesser moon had burstagain from below the horizon, we found thatwe were at the foot of a mighty ice-barrier,from which outcropped great patches of the


granite hills which hold it from encroachingfarther toward the south.

What fate! With the journey all but com-pleted to be thus wrecked upon the wrong sideof that precipitous and unscalable wall of rockand ice!

I looked at Thuvan Dihn. He but shook hishead dejectedly.

The balance of the night we spent shiver-ing in our inadequate sleeping silks and fursupon the snow that lies at the foot of the ice-barrier.

With daylight my battered spirits regainedsomething of their accustomed hopefulness,though I must admit that there was littleenough for them to feed upon.

“What shall we do?” asked Thuvan Dihn.“How may we pass that which is impassable?”

“First we must disprove its impassability,”I replied. “Nor shall I admit that it is impass-able before I have followed its entire circleand stand again upon this spot, defeated. Thesooner we start, the better, for I see no otherway, and it will take us more than a monthto travel the weary, frigid miles that lie beforeus.”

For five days of cold and suffering and pri-vation we traversed the rough and frozen waywhich lies at the foot of the ice-barrier. Fierce,fur-bearing creatures attacked us by daylightand by dark. Never for a moment were we safefrom the sudden charge of some huge demonof the north.

The apt was our most consistent and dan-gerous foe.


It is a huge, white-furred creature with sixlimbs, four of which, short and heavy, carry itswiftly over the snow and ice; while the othertwo, growing forward from its shoulders on ei-ther side of its long, powerful neck, terminatein white, hairless hands, with which it seizesand holds its prey.

Its head and mouth are more similar in ap-pearance to those of a hippopotamus than toany other earthly animal, except that from thesides of the lower jawbone two mighty hornscurve slightly downward toward the front.

Its two huge eyes inspired my greatest cu-riosity. They extend in two vast, oval patchesfrom the center of the top of the cranium downeither side of the head to below the roots ofthe horns, so that these weapons really growout from the lower part of the eyes, which arecomposed of several thousand ocelli each.

This eye structure seemed remarkable ina beast whose haunts were upon a glaringfield of ice and snow, and though I found uponminute examination of several that we killedthat each ocellus is furnished with its own lid,and that the animal can at will close as manyof the facets of his huge eyes as he chooses, yetI was positive that nature had thus equippedhim because much of his life was to be spentin dark, subterranean recesses.

Shortly after this we came upon the hugestapt that we had seen. The creature stood fullyeight feet at the shoulder, and was so sleekand clean and glossy that I could have swornthat he had but recently been groomed.

He stood head-on eyeing us as we ap-


proached him, for we had found it a waste oftime to attempt to escape the perpetual bes-tial rage which seems to possess these demoncreatures, who rove the dismal north attack-ing every living thing that comes within thescope of their far-seeing eyes.

Even when their bellies are full and theycan eat no more, they kill purely for the plea-sure which they derive from taking life, and sowhen this particular apt failed to charge us,and instead wheeled and trotted away as weneared him, I should have been greatly sur-prised had I not chanced to glimpse the sheenof a golden collar about its neck.

Thuvan Dihn saw it, too, and it carriedthe same message of hope to us both. Onlyman could have placed that collar there, andas no race of Martians of which we knewaught ever had attempted to domesticate theferocious apt, he must belong to a people ofthe north of whose very existence we wereignorant—possibly to the fabled yellow men ofBarsoom; that once powerful race which wassupposed to be extinct, though sometimes, bytheorists, thought still to exist in the frozennorth.

Simultaneously we started upon the trailof the great beast. Woola was quickly made tounderstand our desires, so that it was unnec-essary to attempt to keep in sight of the ani-mal whose swift flight over the rough groundsoon put him beyond our vision.

For the better part of two hours the trailparalleled the barrier, and then suddenlyturned toward it through the roughest and


seemingly most impassable country I ever hadbeheld.

Enormous granite boulders blocked theway on every hand; deep rifts in the ice threat-ened to engulf us at the least misstep; andfrom the north a slight breeze wafted to ournostrils an unspeakable stench that almostchoked us.

For another two hours we were occupied intraversing a few hundred yards to the foot ofthe barrier.

Then, turning about the corner of a wall-like outcropping of granite, we came upon asmooth area of two or three acres before thebase of the towering pile of ice and rock thathad baffled us for days, and before us beheldthe dark and cavernous mouth of a cave.

From this repelling portal the horridstench was emanating, and as Thuvan Dihnespied the place he halted with an exclama-tion of profound astonishment.

“By all my ancestors!” he ejaculated. “ThatI should have lived to witness the reality ofthe fabled Carrion Caves! If these indeed bethey, we have found a way beyond the ice-barrier.

“The ancient chronicles of the first histori-ans of Barsoom—so ancient that we have forages considered them mythology—record thepassing of the yellow men from the ravages ofthe green hordes that overran Barsoom as thedrying up of the great oceans drove the domi-nant races from their strongholds.

“They tell of the wanderings of the rem-nants of this once powerful race, harassed at


every step, until at last they found a waythrough the ice-barrier of the north to a fer-tile valley at the pole.

“At the opening to the subterranean pas-sage that led to their haven of refuge a mightybattle was fought in which the yellow menwere victorious, and within the caves thatgave ingress to their new home they piled thebodies of the dead, both yellow and green, thatthe stench might warn away their enemiesfrom further pursuit.

“And ever since that long-gone day havethe dead of this fabled land been carried tothe Carrion Caves, that in death and de-cay they might serve their country and warnaway invading enemies. Here, too, is brought,so the fable runs, all the waste stuff of thenation—everything that is subject to rot, andthat can add to the foul stench that assails ournostrils.

“And death lurks at every step among rot-ting dead, for here the fierce apts lair, addingto the putrid accumulation with the frag-ments of their own prey which they cannot de-vour. It is a horrid avenue to our goal, but itis the only one.”

“You are sure, then, that we have found theway to the land of the yellow men?” I cried.

“As sure as may be,” he replied; “havingonly ancient legend to support my belief. Butsee how closely, so far, each detail tallies withthe world-old story of the hegira of the yellowrace. Yes, I am sure that we have discoveredthe way to their ancient hiding place.”

“If it be true, and let us pray that such


may be the case,” I said, “then here may wesolve the mystery of the disappearance of Tar-dos Mors, Jeddak of Helium, and Mors Ka-jak, his son, for no other spot upon Barsoomhas remained unexplored by the many expe-ditions and the countless spies that have beensearching for them for nearly two years. Thelast word that came from them was that theysought Carthoris, my own brave son, beyondthe ice-barrier.”

As we talked we had been approaching theentrance to the cave, and as we crossed thethreshold I ceased to wonder that the ancientgreen enemies of the yellow men had beenhalted by the horrors of that awful way.

The bones of dead men lay man high uponthe broad floor of the first cave, and over allwas a putrid mush of decaying flesh, throughwhich the apts had beaten a hideous trail to-ward the entrance to the second cave beyond.

The roof of this first apartment was low,like all that we traversed subsequently, sothat the foul odors were confined and con-densed to such an extent that they seemed topossess tangible substance. One was almosttempted to draw his short-sword and hew hisway through in search of pure air beyond.

“Can man breathe this polluted air andlive?” asked Thuvan Dihn, choking.

“Not for long, I imagine,” I replied; “so letus make haste. I will go first, and you bringup the rear, with Woola between. Come,” andwith the words I dashed forward, across thefetid mass of putrefaction.

It was not until we had passed through


seven caves of different sizes and varyingbut little in the power and quality of theirstenches that we met with any physical oppo-sition. Then, within the eighth cave, we cameupon a lair of apts.

A full score of the mighty beasts were dis-posed about the chamber. Some were sleep-ing, while others tore at the fresh-killed car-casses of new-brought prey, or fought amongthemselves in their love-making.

Here in the dim light of their subterraneanhome the value of their great eyes was appar-ent, for these inner caves are shrouded in per-petual gloom that is but little less than utterdarkness.

To attempt to pass through the midst ofthat fierce herd seemed, even to me, theheight of folly, and so I proposed to ThuvanDihn that he return to the outer world withWoola, that the two might find their way tocivilization and come again with a sufficientforce to overcome not only the apts, but anyfurther obstacles that might lie between usand our goal.

“In the meantime,” I continued, “I may dis-cover some means of winning my way alone tothe land of the yellow men, but if I am unsuc-cessful one life only will have been sacrificed.Should we all go on and perish, there will benone to guide a succoring party to Dejah Tho-ris and your daughter.”

“I shall not return and leave you herealone, John Carter,” replied Thuvan Dihn.“Whether you go on to victory or death, theJeddak of Ptarth remains at your side. I have


spoken.”I knew from his tone that it were useless

to attempt to argue the question, and so Icompromised by sending Woola back with ahastily penned note enclosed in a small metalcase and fastened about his neck. I com-manded the faithful creature to seek Cartho-ris at Helium, and though half a world andcountless dangers lay between I knew that ifthe thing could be done Woola would do it.

Equipped as he was by nature with mar-velous speed and endurance, and with fright-ful ferocity that made him a match for anysingle enemy of the way, his keen intelligenceand wondrous instinct should easily furnishall else that was needed for the successful ac-complishment of his mission.

It was with evident reluctance that thegreat beast turned to leave me in compliancewith my command, and ere he had gone Icould not resist the inclination to throw myarms about his great neck in a parting hug.He rubbed his cheek against mine in a fi-nal caress, and a moment later was speedingthrough the Carrion Caves toward the outerworld.

In my note to Carthoris I had given explicitdirections for locating the Carrion Caves, im-pressing upon him the necessity for makingentrance to the country beyond through thisavenue, and not to attempt under any circum-stances to cross the ice-barrier with a fleet.I told him that what lay beyond the eighthcave I could not even guess; but I was surethat somewhere upon the other side of the ice-


barrier his mother lay in the power of MataiShang, and that possibly his grandfather andgreat-grandfather as well, if they lived.

Further, I advised him to call upon KulanTith and the son of Thuvan Dihn for warriorsand ships that the expedition might be suf-ficiently strong to insure success at the firstblow.

“And,” I concluded, “if there be time bringTars Tarkas with you, for if I live until youreach me I can think of few greater pleasuresthan to fight once more, shoulder to shoulder,with my old friend.”

When Woola had left us Thuvan Dihn andI, hiding in the seventh cave, discussed anddiscarded many plans for crossing the eighthchamber. From where we stood we saw thatthe fighting among the apts was growing less,and that many that had been feeding hadceased and lain down to sleep.

Presently it became apparent that in ashort time all the ferocious monsters mightbe peacefully slumbering, and thus a haz-ardous opportunity be presented to us to crossthrough their lair.

One by one the remaining brutes stretchedthemselves upon the bubbling decompositionthat covered the mass of bones upon the floorof their den, until but a single apt remainedawake. This huge fellow roamed restlesslyabout, nosing among his companion and theabhorrent litter of the cave.

Occasionally he would stop to peer intentlytoward first one of the exits from the chamberand then the other. His whole demeanor was


as of one who acts as sentry.We were at last forced to the belief that he

would not sleep while the other occupants ofthe lair slept, and so cast about in our mindsfor some scheme whereby we might trick him.Finally I suggested a plan to Thuvan Dihn,and as it seemed as good as any that we haddiscussed we decided to put it to the test.

To this end Thuvan Dihn placed himselfclose against the cave’s wall, beside the en-trance to the eighth chamber, while I delib-erately showed myself to the guardian apt ashe looked toward our retreat. Then I sprangto the opposite side of the entrance, flatteningmy body close to the wall.

Without a sound the great beast movedrapidly toward the seventh cave to see whatmanner of intruder had thus rashly pene-trated so far within the precincts of his habi-tation.

As he poked his head through the nar-row aperture that connects the two caves aheavy long-sword was awaiting him upon ei-ther hand, and before he had an opportunityto emit even a single growl his severed headrolled at our feet.

Quickly we glanced into the eighthchamber—not an apt had moved. Crawlingover the carcass of the huge beast that blockedthe doorway Thuvan Dihn and I cautiouslyentered the forbidding and dangerous den.

Like snails we wound our silent and care-ful way among the huge, recumbent forms.The only sound above our breathing was thesucking noise of our feet as we lifted them


from the ooze of decaying flesh through whichwe crept.

Halfway across the chamber and one of themighty beasts directly before me moved rest-lessly at the very instant that my foot waspoised above his head, over which I must step.

Breathlessly I waited, balancing upon onefoot, for I did not dare move a muscle. Inmy right hand was my keen short-sword, thepoint hovering an inch above the thick fur be-neath which beat the savage heart.

Finally the apt relaxed, sighing, as withthe passing of a bad dream, and resumed theregular respiration of deep slumber. I plantedmy raised foot beyond the fierce head and aninstant later had stepped over the beast.

Thuvan Dihn followed directly after me,and another moment found us at the furtherdoor, undetected.

The Carrion Caves consist of a seriesof twenty-seven connecting chambers, andpresent the appearance of having been erodedby running water in some far-gone age whena mighty river found its way to the souththrough this single breach in the barrier ofrock and ice that hems the country of the pole.

Thuvan Dihn and I traversed the remain-ing nineteen caverns without adventure ormishap.

We were afterward to learn that but once amonth is it possible to find all the apts of theCarrion Caves in a single chamber.

At other times they roam singly or in pairsin and out of the caves, so that it wouldhave been practically impossible for two men


to have passed through the entire twenty-seven chambers without encountering an aptin nearly every one of them. Once a monththey sleep for a full day, and it was our goodfortune to stumble by accident upon one ofthese occasions.

Beyond the last cave we emerged into adesolate country of snow and ice, but founda well-marked trail leading north. The waywas boulder-strewn, as had been that south ofthe barrier, so that we could see but a shortdistance ahead of us at any time.

After a couple of hours we passed round ahuge boulder to come to a steep declivity lead-ing down into a valley.

Directly before us we saw a half dozenmen—fierce, black-bearded fellows, withskins the color of a ripe lemon.

“The yellow men of Barsoom!” ejaculatedThuvan Dihn, as though even now that hesaw them he found it scarce possible to believethat the very race we expected to find hiddenin this remote and inaccessible land did reallyexist.

We withdrew behind an adjacent boulderto watch the actions of the little party, whichstood huddled at the foot of another huge rock,their backs toward us.

One of them was peering round the edge ofthe granite mass as though watching one whoapproached from the opposite side.

Presently the object of his scrutiny camewithin the range of my vision and I saw thatit was another yellow man. All were clothedin magnificent furs—the six in the black and


yellow striped hide of the orluk, while he whoapproached alone was resplendent in the purewhite skin of an apt.

The yellow men were armed with twoswords, and a short javelin was slung acrossthe back of each, while from their left armshung cuplike shields no larger than a dinnerplate, the concave sides of which turned out-ward toward an antagonist.

They seemed puny and futile implementsof safety against an even ordinary swords-man, but I was later to see the purpose ofthem and with what wondrous dexterity theyellow men manipulate them.

One of the swords which each of the war-riors carried caught my immediate attention.I call it a sword, but really it was a sharp-edged blade with a complete hook at the farend.

The other sword was of about the samelength as the hooked instrument, and some-where between that of my long-sword and myshort-sword. It was straight and two-edged.In addition to the weapons I have ennumer-ated each man carried a dagger in his harness.

As the white-furred one approached, thesix grasped their swords more firmly—thehooked instrument in the left hand, thestraight sword in the right, while above theleft wrist the small shield was held rigid upona metal bracelet.

As the lone warrior came opposite themthe six rushed out upon him with fiendishyells that resembled nothing more closelythan the savage war cry of the Apaches of the


South-west.Instantly the attacked drew both his

swords, and as the six fell upon him I wit-nessed as pretty fighting as one might care tosee.

With their sharp hooks the combatants at-tempted to take hold of an adversary, but likelightning the cupshaped shield would springbefore the darting weapon and into its hollowthe hook would plunge.

Once the lone warrior caught an antago-nist in the side with his hook, and drawinghim close ran his sword through him.

But the odds were too unequal, and,though he who fought alone was by far thebest and bravest of them all, I saw that it wasbut a question of time before the remainingfive would find an opening through his mar-velous guard and bring him down.

Now my sympathies have ever been withthe weaker side of an argument, and thoughI knew nothing of the cause of the trouble Icould not stand idly by and see a brave manbutchered by superior numbers.

As a matter of fact I presume I gave lit-tle attention to seeking an excuse, for I lovea good fight too well to need any other reasonfor joining in when one is afoot.

So it was that before Thuvan Dihn knewwhat I was about he saw me standing by theside of the white-clad yellow man, battlinglike mad with his five adversaries.

WITH THEYELLOW MEN

Thuvan Dihn was not long in joining me; and,though we found the hooked weapon a strangeand savage thing with which to deal, the threeof us soon despatched the five black-beardedwarriors who opposed us.

When the battle was over our new acquain-tance turned to me, and removing the shieldfrom his wrist, held it out. I did not know thesignificance of his act, but judged that it wasbut a form of expressing his gratitude to me.

I afterward learned that it symbolized theoffering of a man’s life in return for some greatfavor done him; and my act of refusing, whichI had immediately done, was what was ex-pected of me.

“Then accept from Talu, Prince of Mar-entina,” said the yellow man, “this token ofmy gratitude,” and reaching beneath one ofhis wide sleeves he withdrew a bracelet andplaced it upon my arm. He then went throughthe same ceremony with Thuvan Dihn.

Next he asked our names, and from whatland we hailed. He seemed quite familiar with

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the geography of the outer world, and when Isaid I was from Helium he raised his brows.

“Ah,” he said, “you seek your ruler and hiscompany?”

“Know you of them?” I asked.“But little more than that they were cap-

tured by my uncle, Salensus Oll, Jeddak ofJeddaks, Ruler of Okar, land of the yellow menof Barsoom. As to their fate I know nothing,for I am at war with my uncle, who wouldcrush my power in the principality of Mar-entina.

“These from whom you have just saved meare warriors he has sent out to find and slayme, for they know that often I come alone tohunt and kill the sacred apt which SalensusOll so much reveres. It is partly because Ihate his religion that Salensus Oll hates me;but mostly does he fear my growing power andthe great faction which has arisen through-out Okar that would be glad to see me rulerof Okar and Jeddak of Jeddaks in his place.

“He is a cruel and tyrannous master whomall hate, and were it not for the great fear theyhave of him I could raise an army overnightthat would wipe out the few that might re-main loyal to him. My own people are faithfulto me, and the little valley of Marentina haspaid no tribute to the court of Salensus Oll fora year.

“Nor can he force us, for a dozen men mayhold the narrow way to Marentina against amillion. But now, as to thine own affairs. Howmay I aid you? My palace is at your disposal,if you wish to honor me by coming to Mar-


entina.”“When our work is done we shall be glad

to accept your invitation,” I replied. “But nowyou can assist us most by directing us to thecourt of Salensus Oll, and suggesting somemeans by which we may gain admission to thecity and the palace, or whatever other placewe find our friends to be confined.”

Talu gazed ruefully at our smooth facesand at Thuvan Dihn’s red skin and my whiteone.

“First you must come to Marentina,” hesaid, “for a great change must be wrought inyour appearance before you can hope to enterany city in Okar. You must have yellow facesand black beards, and your apparel and trap-pings must be those least likely to arouse sus-picion. In my palace is one who can make youappear as truly yellow men as does SalensusOll himself.”

His counsel seemed wise; and as there wasapparently no other way to insure a successfulentry to Kadabra, the capital city of Okar, weset out with Talu, Prince of Marentina, for hislittle, rock-bound country.

The way was over some of the worst travel-ing I have ever seen, and I do not wonder thatin this land where there are neither thoats norfliers that Marentina is in little fear of inva-sion; but at last we reached our destination,the first view of which I had from a slight ele-vation a half-mile from the city.

Nestled in a deep valley lay a city of Mar-tian concrete, whose every street and plazaand open space was roofed with glass. All


about lay snow and ice, but there was noneupon the rounded, domelike, crystal coveringthat enveloped the whole city.

Then I saw how these people combattedthe rigors of the arctic, and lived in luxuryand comfort in the midst of a land of perpet-ual ice. Their cities were veritable hothouses,and when I had come within this one my re-spect and admiration for the scientific and en-gineering skill of this buried nation was un-bounded.

The moment we entered the city Taluthrew off his outer garments of fur, as did we,and I saw that his apparel differed but littlefrom that of the red races of Barsoom. Exceptfor his leathern harness, covered thick withjewels and metal, he was naked, nor could onehave comfortably worn apparel in that warmand humid atmosphere.

For three days we remained the guests ofPrince Talu, and during that time he show-ered upon us every attention and courtesywithin his power. He showed us all that wasof interest in his great city.

The Marentina atmosphere plant willmaintain life indefinitely in the cities of thenorth pole after all life upon the balance ofdying Mars is extinct through the failure ofthe air supply, should the great central plantagain cease functioning as it did upon thatmemorable occasion that gave me the oppor-tunity of restoring life and happiness to thestrange world that I had already learned tolove so well.

He showed us the heating system that


stores the sun’s rays in great reservoirs be-neath the city, and how little is necessary tomaintain the perpetual summer heat of theglorious garden spot within this arctic par-adise.

Broad avenues of sod sewn with the seed ofthe ocher vegetation of the dead sea bottomscarried the noiseless traffic of light and airyground fliers that are the only form of artifi-cial transportation used north of the giganticice-barrier.

The broad tires of these unique fliers arebut rubber-like gas bags filled with the eighthBarsoomian ray, or ray of propulsion—that re-markable discovery of the Martians that hasmade possible the great fleets of mighty air-ships that render the red man of the outerworld supreme. It is this ray which propelsthe inherent or reflected light of the planetoff into space, and when confined gives to theMartian craft their airy buoyancy.

The ground fliers of Marentina contain justsufficient buoyancy in their automobile-likewheels to give the cars traction for steeringpurposes; and though the hind wheels aregeared to the engine, and aid in driving themachine, the bulk of this work is carried by asmall propeller at the stern.

I know of no more delightful sensationthan that of riding in one of these luxuri-ously appointed cars which skim, light andairy as feathers, along the soft, mossy avenuesof Marentina. They move with absolute noise-lessness between borders of crimson swardand beneath arching trees gorgeous with the


wondrous blooms that mark so many of thehighly cultivated varieties of Barsoomian veg-etation.

By the end of the third day the courtbarber—I can think of no other earthly appel-lation by which to describe him—had wroughtso remarkable a transformation in both Thu-van Dihn and myself that our own wiveswould never have known us. Our skins wereof the same lemon color as his own, and great,black beards and mustaches had been deftlyaffixed to our smooth faces. The trappings ofwarriors of Okar aided in the deception; andfor wear beyond the hothouse cities we eachhad suits of the black- and yellow-striped or-luk.

Talu gave us careful directions for the jour-ney to Kadabra, the capital city of the Okarnation, which is the racial name of the yellowmen. This good friend even accompanied uspart way, and then, promising to aid us in anyway that he found possible, bade us adieu.

On parting he slipped upon my finger a cu-riously wrought ring set with a dead-black,lusterless stone, which appeared more like abit of bituminous coal than the priceless Bar-soomian gem which in reality it is.

“There had been but three others cut fromthe mother stone,” he said, “which is in mypossession. These three are worn by nobleshigh in my confidence, all of whom have beensent on secret missions to the court of Salen-sus Oll.

“Should you come within fifty feet of any ofthese three you will feel a rapid, pricking sen-


sation in the finger upon which you wear thisring. He who wears one of its mates will ex-perience the same feeling; it is caused by anelectrical action that takes place the momenttwo of these gems cut from the same motherstone come within the radius of each other’spower. By it you will know that a friend is athand upon whom you may depend for assis-tance in time of need.

“Should another wearer of one of thesegems call upon you for aid do not deny him,and should death threaten you swallow thering rather than let it fall into the hands ofenemies. Guard it with your life, John Carter,for some day it may mean more than life toyou.”

With this parting admonition our goodfriend turned back toward Marentina, and weset our faces in the direction of the city ofKadabra and the court of Salensus Oll, Jed-dak of Jeddaks.

That very evening we came within sight ofthe walled and glass-roofed city of Kadabra.It lies in a low depression near the pole, sur-rounded by rocky, snow-clad hills. From thepass through which we entered the valleywe had a splendid view of this great city ofthe north. Its crystal domes sparkled in thebrilliant sunlight gleaming above the frost-covered outer wall that circles the entire onehundred miles of its circumference.

At regular intervals great gates give en-trance to the city; but even at the distancefrom which we looked upon the massive pilewe could see that all were closed, and, in ac-


cordance with Talu’s suggestion, we deferredattempting to enter the city until the follow-ing morning.

As he had said, we found numerous cavesin the hillsides about us, and into one of thesewe crept for the night. Our warm orluk skinskept us perfectly comfortable, and it was onlyafter a most refreshing sleep that we awokeshortly after daylight on the following morn-ing.

Already the city was astir, and from sev-eral of the gates we saw parties of yellow menemerging. Following closely each detail of theinstructions given us by our good friend ofMarentina, we remained concealed for severalhours until one party of some half dozen war-riors had passed along the trail below our hid-ing place and entered the hills by way of thepass along which we had come the previousevening.

After giving them time to get well out ofsight of our cave, Thuvan Dihn and I creptout and followed them, overtaking them whenthey were well into the hills.

When we had come almost to them I calledaloud to their leader, when the whole partyhalted and turned toward us. The crucial testhad come. Could we but deceive these men therest would be comparatively easy.

“Kaor!” I cried as I came closer to them.“Kaor!” responded the officer in charge of

the party.“We be from Illall,” I continued, giving the

name of the most remote city of Okar, whichhas little or no intercourse with Kadabra.


“Only yesterday we arrived, and this morningthe captain of the gate told us that you weresetting out to hunt orluks, which is a sport wedo not find in our own neighborhood. We havehastened after you to pray that you allow usto accompany you.”

The officer was entirely deceived, and gra-ciously permitted us to go with them for theday. The chance guess that they were boundupon an orluk hunt proved correct, and Taluhad said that the chances were ten to one thatsuch would be the mission of any party leav-ing Kadabra by the pass through which we en-tered the valley, since that way leads directlyto the vast plains frequented by this elephan-tine beast of prey.

In so far as the hunt was concerned, theday was a failure, for we did not see a singleorluk; but this proved more than fortunate forus, since the yellow men were so chagrined bytheir misfortune that they would not enter thecity by the same gate by which they had leftit in the morning, as it seemed that they hadmade great boasts to the captain of that gateabout their skill at this dangerous sport.

We, therefore, approached Kadabra at apoint several miles from that at which theparty had quitted it in the morning, and sowere relieved of the danger of embarrassingquestions and explanations on the part of thegate captain, whom we had said had directedus to this particular hunting party.

We had come quite close to the city whenmy attention was attracted toward a tall,black shaft that reared its head several hun-


dred feet into the air from what appeared tobe a tangled mass of junk or wreckage, nowpartially snow-covered.

I did not dare venture an inquiry for fearof arousing suspicion by evident ignorance ofsomething which as a yellow man I shouldhave known; but before we reached the citygate I was to learn the purpose of that grimshaft and the meaning of the mighty accumu-lation beneath it.

We had come almost to the gate whenone of the party called to his fellows, at thesame time pointing toward the distant south-ern horizon. Following the direction he indi-cated, my eyes descried the hull of a large flierapproaching rapidly from above the crest ofthe encircling hills.

“Still other fools who would solve the mys-teries of the forbidden north,” said the officer,half to himself. “Will they never cease theirfatal curiosity?”

“Let us hope not,” answered one of the war-riors, “for then what should we do for slavesand sport?”

“True; but what stupid beasts they areto continue to come to a region from whencenone of them ever has returned.”

“Let us tarry and watch the end of thisone,” suggested one of the men.

The officer looked toward the city.“The watch has seen him,” he said; “we

may remain, for we may be needed.”I looked toward the city and saw several

hundred warriors issuing from the nearestgate. They moved leisurely, as though there


were no need for haste—nor was there, as Iwas presently to learn.

Then I turned my eyes once more towardthe flier. She was moving rapidly toward thecity, and when she had come close enough Iwas surprised to see that her propellers wereidle.

Straight for that grim shaft she bore. Atthe last minute I saw the great blades move toreverse her, yet on she came as though drawnby some mighty, irresistible power.

Intense excitement prevailed upon herdeck, where men were running hither andthither, manning the guns and preparing tolaunch the small, one-man fliers, a fleet ofwhich is part of the equipment of every Mar-tian war vessel. Closer and closer to the blackshaft the ship sped. In another instant shemust strike, and then I saw the familiar sig-nal flown that sends the lesser boats in a greatflock from the deck of the mother ship.

Instantly a hundred tiny fliers rose fromher deck, like a swarm of huge dragon flies;but scarcely were they clear of the battleshipthan the nose of each turned toward the shaft,and they, too, rushed on at frightful speed to-ward the same now seemingly inevitable endthat menaced the larger vessel.

A moment later the collision came. Menwere hurled in every direction from the ship’sdeck, while she, bent and crumpled, took thelast, long plunge to the scrap-heap at theshaft’s base.

With her fell a shower of her own tinyfliers, for each of them had come in violent col-


lision with the solid shaft.I noticed that the wrecked fliers scraped

down the shaft’s side, and that their fall wasnot as rapid as might have been expected; andthen suddenly the secret of the shaft burstupon me, and with it an explanation of thecause that prevented a flier that passed toofar across the ice-barrier ever returning.

The shaft was a mighty magnet, and whenonce a vessel came within the radius of itspowerful attraction for the aluminum steelthat enters so largely into the construction ofall Barsoomian craft, no power on earth couldprevent such an end as we had just witnessed.

I afterward learned that the shaft restsdirectly over the magnetic pole of Mars, butwhether this adds in any way to its incalcula-ble power of attraction I do not know. I am afighting man, not a scientist.

Here, at last, was an explanation of thelong absence of Tardos Mors and Mors Kajak.These valiant and intrepid warriors had daredthe mysteries and dangers of the frozen northto search for Carthoris, whose long absencehad bowed in grief the head of his beautifulmother, Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium.

The moment that the last of the fliers cameto rest at the base of the shaft the black-bearded, yellow warriors swarmed over themass of wreckage upon which they lay, mak-ing prisoners of those who were uninjured andoccasionally despatching with a sword-thrustone of the wounded who seemed prone to re-sent their taunts and insults.

A few of the uninjured red men battled


bravely against their cruel foes, but for themost part they seemed too overwhelmed bythe horror of the catastrophe that had befallenthem to do more than submit supinely to thegolden chains with which they were mana-cled.

When the last of the prisoners had beenconfined, the party returned to the city, at thegate of which we met a pack of fierce, gold-collared apts, each of which marched betweentwo warriors, who held them with strongchains of the same metal as their collars.

Just beyond the gate the attendants loos-ened the whole terrible herd, and as theybounded off toward the grim, black shaft I didnot need to ask to know their mission. Hadthere not been those within the cruel city ofKadabra who needed succor far worse thanthe poor unfortunate dead and dying out therein the cold upon the bent and broken car-casses of a thousand fliers I could not have re-strained my desire to hasten back and do bat-tle with those horrid creatures that had beendespatched to rend and devour them.

As it was I could but follow the yellow war-riors, with bowed head, and give thanks forthe chance that had given Thuvan Dihn andme such easy ingress to the capital of Salen-sus Oll.

Once within the gates, we had no diffi-culty in eluding our friends of the morning,and presently found ourselves in a Martianhostelry.

IN DURANCE

The public houses of Barsoom, I have found,vary but little. There is no privacy for otherthan married couples.

Men without their wives are escorted to alarge chamber, the floor of which is usuallyof white marble or heavy glass, kept scrupu-lously clean. Here are many small, raisedplatforms for the guest’s sleeping silks andfurs, and if he have none of his own clean,fresh ones are furnished at a nominal charge.

Once a man’s belongings have been de-posited upon one of these platforms he is aguest of the house, and that platform his ownuntil he leaves. No one will disturb or molesthis belongings, as there are no thieves uponMars.

As assassination is the one thing to befeared, the proprietors of the hostelries fur-nish armed guards, who pace back and forththrough the sleeping-rooms day and night.The number of guards and gorgeousness oftheir trappings quite usually denote the sta-tus of the hotel.

No meals are served in these houses, butgenerally a public eating place adjoins them.

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Baths are connected with the sleeping cham-bers, and each guest is required to bathe dailyor depart from the hotel.

Usually on a second or third floor there is alarge sleeping-room for single women guests,but its appointments do not vary materiallyfrom the chamber occupied by men. Theguards who watch the women remain in thecorridor outside the sleeping chamber, whilefemale slaves pace back and forth among thesleepers within, ready to notify the warriorsshould their presence be required.

I was surprised to note that all the guardswith the hotel at which we stopped were redmen, and on inquiring of one of them I learnedthat they were slaves purchased by the propri-etors of the hotels from the government. Theman whose post was past my sleeping plat-form had been commander of the navy of agreat Martian nation; but fate had carried hisflagship across the ice-barrier within the ra-dius of power of the magnetic shaft, and nowfor many tedious years he had been a slave ofthe yellow men.

He told me that princes, jeds, and even jed-daks of the outer world, were among the me-nials who served the yellow race; but when Iasked him if he had heard of the fate of MorsKajak or Tardos Mors he shook his head, say-ing that he never had heard of their beingprisoners here, though he was very familiarwith the reputations and fame they bore inthe outer world.

Neither had he heard any rumor of thecoming of the Father of Therns and the black

IN DURANCE 143

dator of the First Born, but he hastened to ex-plain that he knew little of what took placewithin the palace. I could see that he won-dered not a little that a yellow man should beso inquisitive about certain red prisoners frombeyond the ice-barrier, and that I should be soignorant of customs and conditions among myown race.

In fact, I had forgotten my disguise upondiscovering a red man pacing before my sleep-ing platform; but his growing expression ofsurprise warned me in time, for I had no mindto reveal my identity to any unless some goodcould come of it, and I did not see how thispoor fellow could serve me yet, though I had itin my mind that later I might be the meansof serving him and all the other thousandsof prisoners who do the bidding of their sternmasters in Kadabra.

Thuvan Dihn and I discussed our plans aswe sat together among our sleeping silks andfurs that night in the midst of the hundreds ofyellow men who occupied the apartment withus. We spoke in low whispers, but, as that isonly what courtesy demands in a public sleep-ing place, we roused no suspicion.

At last, determining that all must be butidle speculation until after we had had achance to explore the city and attempt to putinto execution the plan Talu had suggested,we bade each other good night and turned tosleep.

After breakfasting the following morningwe set out to see Kadabra, and as, through thegenerosity of the prince of Marentina, we were


well supplied with the funds current in Okarwe purchased a handsome ground flier. Hav-ing learned to drive them while in Marentina,we spent a delightful and profitable day ex-ploring the city, and late in the afternoon atthe hour Talu told us we would find govern-ment officials in their offices, we stopped be-fore a magnificent building on the plaza oppo-site the royal grounds and the palace.

Here we walked boldly in past the armedguard at the door, to be met by a red slavewithin who asked our wishes.

“Tell Sorav, your master, that two warriorsfrom Illall wish to take service in the palaceguard,” I said.

Sorav, Talu had told us, was the com-mander of the forces of the palace, and asmen from the further cities of Okar—and es-pecially Illall—were less likely to be taintedwith the germ of intrigue which had for yearsinfected the household of Salensus Oll, hewas sure that we would be welcomed and fewquestions asked us.

He had primed us with such general infor-mation as he thought would be necessary forus to pass muster before Sorav, after whichwe would have to undergo a further examina-tion before Salensus Oll that he might deter-mine our physical fitness and our ability aswarriors.

The little experience we had had with thestrange hooked sword of the yellow man andhis cuplike shield made it seem rather un-likely that either of us could pass this finaltest, but there was the chance that we might

IN DURANCE 145

be quartered in the palace of Salensus Oll forseveral days after being accepted by Sorav be-fore the Jeddak of Jeddaks would find time toput us to the final test.

After a wait of several minutes in an ante-chamber we were summoned into the pri-vate office of Sorav, where we were cour-teously greeted by this ferocious-appearing,black-bearded officer. He asked us our namesand stations in our own city, and having re-ceived replies that were evidently satisfactoryto him, he put certain questions to us thatTalu had foreseen and prepared us for.

The interview could not have lasted overten minutes when Sorav summoned an aidwhom he instructed to record us properly, andthen escort us to the quarters in the palacewhich are set aside for aspirants to member-ship in the palace guard.

The aid took us to his own office first,where he measured and weighed and pho-tographed us simultaneously with a machineingeniously devised for that purpose, fivecopies being instantly reproduced in five dif-ferent offices of the government, two of whichare located in other cities miles distant. Thenhe led us through the palace grounds to themain guardroom of the palace, there turningus over to the officer in charge.

This individual again questioned usbriefly, and finally despatched a soldier toguide us to our quarters. These we foundlocated upon the second floor of the palacein a semi-detached tower at the rear of theedifice.


When we asked our guide why we werequartered so far from the guardroom hereplied that the custom of the older mem-bers of the guard of picking quarrels withaspirants to try their metal had resulted inso many deaths that it was found difficultto maintain the guard at its full strengthwhile this custom prevailed. Salensus Ollhad, therefore, set apart these quarters for as-pirants, and here they were securely lockedagainst the danger of attack by members ofthe guard.

This unwelcome information put a suddencheck to all our well-laid plans, for it meantthat we should virtually be prisoners in thepalace of Salensus Oll until the time that heshould see fit to give us the final examinationfor efficiency.

As it was this interval upon which we hadbanked to accomplish so much in our searchfor Dejah Thoris and Thuvia of Ptarth, ourchagrin was unbounded when we heard thegreat lock click behind our guide as he hadquitted us after ushering us into the chamberswe were to occupy.

With a wry face I turned to Thuvan Dihn.My companion but shook his head disconso-lately and walked to one of the windows uponthe far side of the apartment.

Scarcely had he gazed beyond them thanhe called to me in a tone of suppressed excite-ment and surprise. In an instant I was by hisside.

“Look!” said Thuvan Dihn, pointing towardthe courtyard below.

IN DURANCE 147

As my eyes followed the direction indicatedI saw two women pacing back and forth in anenclosed garden.

At the same moment I recognizedthem—they were Dejah Thoris and Thu-via of Ptarth!

There were they whom I had trailed fromone pole to another, the length of a world.Only ten feet of space and a few metal barsseparated me from them.

With a cry I attracted their attention, andas Dejah Thoris looked up full into my eyes Imade the sign of love that the men of Barsoommake to their women.

To my astonishment and horror her headwent high, and as a look of utter con-tempt touched her finely chiseled features sheturned her back full upon me. My body is cov-ered with the scars of a thousand conflicts, butnever in all my long life have I suffered suchanguish from a wound, for this time the steelof a woman’s look had entered my heart.

With a groan I turned away and buried myface in my arms. I heard Thuvan Dihn callaloud to Thuvia, but an instant later his ex-clamation of surprise betokened that he, too,had been repulsed by his own daughter.

“They will not even listen,” he cried tome. “They have put their hands over theirears and walked to the farther end of the gar-den. Ever heard you of such mad work, JohnCarter? The two must be bewitched.”

Presently I mustered the courage to returnto the window, for even though she spurnedme I loved her, and could not keep my eyes


from feasting upon her divine face and fig-ure, but when she saw me looking she againturned away.

I was at my wit’s end to account for herstrange actions, and that Thuvia, too, hadturned against her father seemed incredible.Could it be that my incomparable princessstill clung to the hideous faith from which Ihad rescued her world? Could it be that shelooked upon me with loathing and contemptbecause I had returned from the Valley Dor,or because I had desecrated the temples andpersons of the Holy Therns?

To naught else could I ascribe her strangedeportment, yet it seemed far from possiblethat such could be the case, for the love of De-jah Thoris for John Carter had been a greatand wondrous love—far above racial distinc-tions, creed, or religion.

As I gazed ruefully at the back of herhaughty, royal head a gate at the opposite endof the garden opened and a man entered. Ashe did so he turned and slipped somethinginto the hand of the yellow guardsman beyondthe gate, nor was the distance too great that Imight not see that money had passed betweenthem.

Instantly I knew that this newcomer hadbribed his way within the garden. Then heturned in the direction of the two women, andI saw that he was none other than Thurid, theblack dator of the First Born.

He approached quite close to them beforehe spoke, and as they turned at the sound ofhis voice I saw Dejah Thoris shrink from him.

IN DURANCE 149

There was a nasty leer upon his face ashe stepped close to her and spoke again. Icould not hear his words, but her answer cameclearly.

“The granddaughter of Tardos Mors can al-ways die,” she said, “but she could never liveat the price you name.”

Then I saw the black scoundrel go upon hisknees beside her, fairly groveling in the dirt,pleading with her. Only part of what he saidcame to me, for though he was evidently la-boring under the stress of passion and excite-ment, it was equally apparent that he did notdare raise his voice for fear of detection.

“I would save you from Matai Shang,” Iheard him say. “You know the fate that awaitsyou at his hands. Would you not choose merather than the other?”

“I would choose neither,” replied DejahThoris, “even were I free to choose, as youknow well I am not.”

“You are free!” he cried. “John Carter,Prince of Helium, is dead.”

“I know better than that; but even were hedead, and I must needs choose another mate,it should be a plant man or a great white apein preference to either Matai Shang or you,black calot,” she answered with a sneer of con-tempt.

Of a sudden the vicious beast lost all con-trol of himself, as with a vile oath he leapedat the slender woman, gripping her tenderthroat in his brute clutch. Thuvia screamedand sprang to aid her fellow-prisoner, and atthe same instant I, too, went mad, and tearing


at the bars that spanned my window I rippedthem from their sockets as they had been butcopper wire.

Hurling myself through the aperture Ireached the garden, but a hundred feet fromwhere the black was choking the life from myDejah Thoris, and with a single great bound Iwas upon him. I spoke no word as I tore hisdefiling fingers from that beautiful throat, nordid I utter a sound as I hurled him twenty feetfrom me.

Foaming with rage, Thurid regained hisfeet and charged me like a mad bull.

“Yellow man,” he shrieked, “you knew notupon whom you had laid your vile hands, butere I am done with you, you will know wellwhat it means to offend the person of a FirstBorn.”

Then he was upon me, reaching for mythroat, and precisely as I had done that dayin the courtyard of the Temple of Issus I didhere in the garden of the palace of SalensusOll. I ducked beneath his outstretched arms,and as he lunged past me I planted a terrificright upon the side of his jaw.

Just as he had done upon that other occa-sion he did now. Like a top he spun round, hisknees gave beneath him, and he crumpled tothe ground at my feet. Then I heard a voicebehind me.

It was the deep voice of authority thatmarks the ruler of men, and when I turned toface the resplendent figure of a giant yellowman I did not need to ask to know that it wasSalensus Oll. At his right stood Matai Shang,

IN DURANCE 151

and behind them a score of guardsmen.“Who are you,” he cried, “and what means

this intrusion within the precincts of thewomen’s garden? I do not recall your face.How came you here?”

But for his last words I should have forgot-ten my disguise entirely and told him outrightthat I was John Carter, Prince of Helium; buthis question recalled me to myself. I pointedto the dislodged bars of the window above.

“I am an aspirant to membership in thepalace guard,” I said, “and from yonder win-dow in the tower where I was confined await-ing the final test for fitness I saw this bruteattack this woman. I could not stand idly by,O Jeddak, and see this thing done within thevery palace grounds, and yet feel that I was fitto serve and guard your royal person.”

I had evidently made an impression uponthe ruler of Okar by my fair words, and whenhe had turned to Dejah Thoris and Thuvia ofPtarth, and both had corroborated my state-ments it began to look pretty dark for Thurid.

I saw the ugly gleam in Matai Shang’s evileyes as Dejah Thoris narrated all that hadpassed between Thurid and herself, and whenshe came to that part which dealt with my in-terference with the dator of the First Born hergratitude was quite apparent, though I couldsee by her eyes that something puzzled herstrangely.

I did not wonder at her attitude toward mewhile others were present; but that she shouldhave denied me while she and Thuvia werethe only occupants of the garden still cut me


sorely.As the examination proceeded I cast a

glance at Thurid and startled him lookingwide-eyed and wonderingly at me, and thenof a sudden he laughed full in my face.

A moment later Salensus Oll turned to-ward the black.

“What have you to say in explanation ofthese charges?” he asked in a deep and ter-rible voice. “Dare you aspire to one whom theFather of Therns has chosen—one who mighteven be a fit mate for the Jeddak of Jeddakshimself?”

And then the black-bearded tyrant turnedand cast a sudden greedy look upon DejahThoris, as though with the words a newthought and a new desire had sprung upwithin his mind and breast.

Thurid had been about to reply and, witha malicious grin upon his face, was pointingan accusing finger at me, when Salensus Oll’swords and the expression of his face cut himshort.

A cunning look crept into his eyes, and Iknew from the expression of his face that hisnext words were not the ones he had intendedto speak.

“O Mightiest of Jeddaks,” he said, “theman and the women do not speak the truth.The fellow had come into the garden to assistthem to escape. I was beyond and overheardtheir conversation, and when I entered, thewoman screamed and the man sprang uponme and would have killed me.

“What know you of this man? He is a

IN DURANCE 153

stranger to you, and I dare say that you willfind him an enemy and a spy. Let him be puton trial, Salensus Oll, rather than your friendand guest, Thurid, Dator of the First Born.”

Salensus Oll looked puzzled. He turnedagain and looked upon Dejah Thoris, and thenThurid stepped quite close to him and whis-pered something in his ear—what, I know not.

Presently the yellow ruler turned to one ofhis officers.

“See that this man be securely confined un-til we have time to go deeper into this affair,”he commanded, “and as bars alone seem inad-equate to restrain him, let chains be added.”

Then he turned and left the garden, takingDejah Thoris with him—his hand upon hershoulder. Thurid and Matai Shang went also,and as they reached the gateway the blackturned and laughed again aloud in my face.

What could be the meaning of his suddenchange toward me? Could he suspect my trueidentity? It must be that, and the thing thathad betrayed me was the trick and blow thathad laid him low for the second time.

As the guards dragged me away my heartwas very sad and bitter indeed, for now to thetwo relentless enemies that had hounded herfor so long another and a more powerful onehad been added, for I would have been but afool had I not recognized the sudden love forDejah Thoris that had just been born in theterrible breast of Salensus Oll, Jeddak of Jed-daks, ruler of Okar.

THE PIT OFPLENTY

I did not languish long within the prison ofSalensus Oll. During the short time that Ilay there, fettered with chains of gold, I of-ten wondered as to the fate of Thuvan Dihn,Jeddak of Ptarth.

My brave companion had followed me intothe garden as I attacked Thurid, and whenSalensus Oll had left with Dejah Thoris andthe others, leaving Thuvia of Ptarth behind,he, too, had remained in the garden with hisdaughter, apparently unnoticed, for he wasappareled similarly to the guards.

The last I had seen of him he stood waitingfor the warriors who escorted me to close thegate behind them, that he might be alone withThuvia. Could it be possible that they had es-caped? I doubted it, and yet with all my heartI hoped that it might be true.

The third day of my incarceration broughta dozen warriors to escort me to the audiencechamber, where Salensus Oll himself was totry me. A great number of nobles crowdedthe room, and among them I saw Thurid, but

155


Matai Shang was not there.Dejah Thoris, as radiantly beautiful as

ever, sat upon a small throne beside SalensusOll. The expression of sad hopelessness uponher dear face cut deep into my heart.

Her position beside the Jeddak of Jeddaksboded ill for her and me, and on the instantthat I saw her there, there sprang to my mindthe firm intention never to leave that chamberalive if I must leave her in the clutches of thispowerful tyrant.

I had killed better men than Salensus Oll,and killed them with my bare hands, and nowI swore to myself that I should kill him if Ifound that the only way to save the Princessof Helium. That it would mean almost in-stant death for me I cared not, except thatit would remove me from further efforts inbehalf of Dejah Thoris, and for this reasonalone I would have chosen another way, foreven though I should kill Salensus Oll that actwould not restore my beloved wife to her ownpeople. I determined to wait the final outcomeof the trial, that I might learn all that I couldof the Okarian ruler’s intentions, and then actaccordingly.

Scarcely had I come before him than Salen-sus Oll summoned Thurid also.

“Dator Thurid,” he said, “you have madea strange request of me; but, in accordancewith your wishes and your promise that it willresult only to my interests, I have decided toaccede.

“You tell me that a certain announcementwill be the means of convicting this prisoner


and, at the same time, open the way to thegratification of my dearest wish.”

Thurid nodded.“Then shall I make the announcement

here before all my nobles,” continued Salen-sus Oll. “For a year no queen has sat upon thethrone beside me, and now it suits me to taketo wife one who is reputed the most beauti-ful woman upon Barsoom. A statement whichnone may truthfully deny.

“Nobles of Okar, unsheathe your swordsand do homage to Dejah Thoris, Princess ofHelium and future Queen of Okar, for at theend of the allotted ten days she shall becomethe wife of Salensus Oll.”

As the nobles drew their blades and liftedthem on high, in accordance with the ancientcustom of Okar when a jeddak announces hisintention to wed, Dejah Thoris sprang to herfeet and, raising her hand aloft, cried in a loudvoice that they desist.

“I may not be the wife of Salensus Oll,” shepleaded, “for already I be a wife and mother.John Carter, Prince of Helium, still lives. Iknow it to be true, for I overheard MataiShang tell his daughter Phaidor that he hadseen him in Kaor, at the court of Kulan Tith,Jeddak. A jeddak does not wed a marriedwoman, nor will Salensus Oll thus violate thebonds of matrimony.”

Salensus Oll turned upon Thurid with anugly look.

“Is this the surprise you held in store forme?” he cried. “You assured me that no obsta-cle which might not be easily overcome stood


between me and this woman, and now I findthat the one insuperable obstacle intervenes.What mean you, man? What have you to say?”

“And should I deliver John Carter into yourhands, Salensus Oll, would you not feel thatI had more than satisfied the promise that Imade you?” answered Thurid.

“Talk not like a fool,” cried the enraged jed-dak. “I am no child to be thus played with.”

“I am talking only as a man who knows,”replied Thurid. “Knows that he can do all thathe claims.”

“Then turn John Carter over to me withinten days or yourself suffer the end that Ishould mete out to him were he in my power!”snapped the Jeddak of Jeddaks, with an uglyscowl.

“You need not wait ten days, Salensus Oll,”replied Thurid; and then, turning suddenlyupon me as he extended a pointing finger, hecried: “There stands John Carter, Prince ofHelium!”

“Fool!” shrieked Salensus Oll. “Fool! JohnCarter is a white man. This fellow beas yellow as myself. John Carter’s face issmooth—Matai Shang has described him tome. This prisoner has a beard and mustacheas large and black as any in Okar. Quick,guardsmen, to the pits with the black maniacwho wishes to throw his life away for a poorjoke upon your ruler!”

“Hold!” cried Thurid, and springing for-ward before I could guess his intention, he hadgrasped my beard and ripped the whole falsefabric from my face and head, revealing my


smooth, tanned skin beneath and my close-cropped black hair.

Instantly pandemonium reigned in the au-dience chamber of Salensus Oll. Warriorspressed forward with drawn blades, thinkingthat I might be contemplating the assassina-tion of the Jeddak of Jeddaks; while others,out of curiosity to see one whose name was fa-miliar from pole to pole, crowded behind theirfellows.

As my identity was revealed I saw DejahThoris spring to her feet—amazement writlarge upon her face—and then through thatjam of armed men she forced her way beforeany could prevent. A moment only and shewas before me with outstretched arms andeyes filled with the light of her great love.

“John Carter! John Carter!” she cried as Ifolded her to my breast, and then of a suddenI knew why she had denied me in the gardenbeneath the tower.

What a fool I had been! Expecting thatshe would penetrate the marvelous disguisethat had been wrought for me by the barber ofMarentina! She had not known me, that wasall; and when she saw the sign of love froma stranger she was offended and righteouslyindignant. Indeed, but I had been a fool.

“And it was you,” she cried, “who spoke tome from the tower! How could I dream thatmy beloved Virginian lay behind that fiercebeard and that yellow skin?”

She had been wont to call me her Vir-ginian as a term of endearment, for she knewthat I loved the sound of that beautiful name,


made a thousand times more beautiful andhallowed by her dear lips, and as I heard itagain after all those long years my eyes be-came dimmed with tears and my voice chokedwith emotion.

But an instant did I crush that dear formto me ere Salensus Oll, trembling with rageand jealousy, shouldered his way to us.

“Seize the man,” he cried to his warriors,and a hundred ruthless hands tore us apart.

Well it was for the nobles of the court ofOkar that John Carter had been disarmed. Asit was, a dozen of them felt the weight of myclenched fists, and I had fought my way halfup the steps before the throne to which Salen-sus Oll had carried Dejah Thoris ere ever theycould stop me.

Then I went down, fighting, beneath ahalf-hundred warriors; but before they hadbattered me into unconsciousness I heard thatfrom the lips of Dejah Thoris that made all mysuffering well worth while.

Standing there beside the great tyrant,who clutched her by the arm, she pointed towhere I fought alone against such awful odds.

“Think you, Salensus Oll, that the wife ofsuch as he is,” she cried, “would ever dishonorhis memory, were he a thousand times dead,by mating with a lesser mortal? Lives thereupon any world such another as John Carter,Prince of Helium? Lives there another manwho could fight his way back and forth acrossa warlike planet, facing savage beasts andhordes of savage men, for the love of a woman?

“I, Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, am


his. He fought for me and won me. If you bea brave man you will honor the bravery thatis his, and you will not kill him. Make him aslave if you will, Salensus Oll; but spare hislife. I would rather be a slave with such as hethan be Queen of Okar.”

“Neither slave nor queen dictates to Salen-sus Oll,” replied the Jeddak of Jeddaks. “JohnCarter shall die a natural death in the Pit ofPlenty, and the day he dies Dejah Thoris shallbecome my queen.”

I did not hear her reply, for it was thenthat a blow upon my head brought uncon-sciousness, and when I recovered my sensesonly a handful of guardsmen remained in theaudience chamber with me. As I opened myeyes they goaded me with the points of theirswords and bade me rise.

Then they led me through long corridors toa court far toward the center of the palace.

In the center of the court was a deep pit,near the edge of which stood half a dozenother guardsmen, awaiting me. One of themcarried a long rope in his hands, which hecommenced to make ready as we approached.

We had come to within fifty feet of thesemen when I felt a sudden strange and rapidpricking sensation in one of my fingers.

For a moment I was nonplused by the oddfeeling, and then there came to me recollec-tion of that which in the stress of my adven-ture I had entirely forgotten—the gift ring ofPrince Talu of Marentina.

Instantly I looked toward the group wewere nearing, at the same time raising my


left hand to my forehead, that the ring mightbe visible to one who sought it. Simultane-ously one of the waiting warriors raised hisleft hand, ostensibly to brush back his hair,and upon one of his fingers I saw the dupli-cate of my own ring.

A quick look of intelligence passed betweenus, after which I kept my eyes turned awayfrom the warrior and did not look at himagain, for fear that I might arouse the sus-picion of the Okarians. When we reached theedge of the pit I saw that it was very deep,and presently I realized I was soon to judgejust how far it extended below the surface ofthe court, for he who held the rope passed itabout my body in such a way that it could bereleased from above at any time; and then, asall the warriors grasped it, he pushed me for-ward, and I fell into the yawning abyss.

After the first jerk as I reached the end ofthe rope that had been paid out to let me fallbelow the pit’s edge they lowered me quicklybut smoothly. The moment before the plunge,while two or three of the men had been as-sisting in adjusting the rope about me, oneof them had brought his mouth close to mycheek, and in the brief interval before I wascast into the forbidding hole he breathed a sin-gle word into my ear:

“Courage!”The pit, which my imagination had pic-

tured as bottomless, proved to be not morethan a hundred feet in depth; but as its wallswere smoothly polished it might as well havebeen a thousand feet, for I could never hope to


escape without outside assistance.For a day I was left in darkness; and then,

quite suddenly, a brilliant light illumined mystrange cell. I was reasonably hungry andthirsty by this time, not having tasted food ordrink since the day prior to my incarceration.

To my amazement I found the sides of thepit, that I had thought smooth, lined withshelves, upon which were the most deliciousviands and liquid refreshments that Okar af-forded.

With an exclamation of delight I sprangforward to partake of some of the welcomefood, but ere ever I reached it the light wasextinguished, and, though I groped my wayabout the chamber, my hands came in contactwith nothing beside the smooth, hard wallthat I had felt on my first examination of myprison.

Immediately the pangs of hunger andthirst began to assail me. Where before I hadhad but a mild craving for food and drink, Inow actually suffered for want of it, and allbecause of the tantalizing sight that I had hadof food almost within my grasp.

Once more darkness and silence envelopedme, a silence that was broken only by a singlemocking laugh.

For another day nothing occurred to breakthe monotony of my imprisonment or relievethe suffering superinduced by hunger andthirst. Slowly the pangs became less keen,as suffering deaded the activity of certainnerves; and then the light flashed on onceagain, and before me stood an array of new


and tempting dishes, with great bottles ofclear water and flagons of refreshing wine,upon the outside of which the cold sweat ofcondensation stood.

Again, with the hunger madness of a wildbeast, I sprang forward to seize those tempt-ing dishes; but, as before, the light went outand I came to a sudden stop against a hardwall.

Then the mocking laugh rang out for a sec-ond time.

The Pit of Plenty!Ah, what a cruel mind must have devised

this exquisite, hellish torture! Day after daywas the thing repeated, until I was on theverge of madness; and then, as I had done inthe pits of the Warhoons, I took a new, firmhold upon my reason and forced it back intothe channels of sanity.

By sheer will-power I regained control overmy tottering mentality, and so successful wasI that the next time that the light came I satquite still and looked indifferently at the freshand tempting food almost within my reach.Glad I was that I had done so, for it gave mean opportunity to solve the seeming mysteryof those vanishing banquets.

As I made no move to reach the food, thetorturers left the light turned on in the hopethat at last I could refrain no longer fromgiving them the delicious thrill of enjoymentthat my former futile efforts to obtain it hadcaused.

And as I sat scrutinizing the laden shelvesI presently saw how the thing was accom-


plished, and so simple was it that I wonderedI had not guessed it before. The wall of myprison was of clearest glass—behind the glasswere the tantalizing viands.

After nearly an hour the light wentout, but this time there was no mockinglaughter—at least not upon the part of my tor-mentors; but I, to be at quits with them, gavea low laugh that none might mistake for thecackle of a maniac.

Nine days passed, and I was weak fromhunger and thirst, but no longer suffering—Iwas past that. Then, down through the dark-ness above, a little parcel fell to the floor atmy side.

Indifferently I groped for it, thinking it butsome new invention of my jailers to add to mysufferings.

At last I found it—a tiny package wrappedin paper, at the end of a strong and slendercord. As I opened it a few lozenges fell to thefloor. As I gathered them up, feeling of themand smelling of them, I discovered that theywere tablets of concentrated food such as arequite common in all parts of Barsoom.

Poison! I thought.Well, what of it? Why not end my misery

now rather than drag out a few more wretcheddays in this dark pit? Slowly I raised one ofthe little pellets to my lips.

“Good-bye, my Dejah Thoris!” I breathed.“I have lived for you and fought for you, andnow my next dearest wish is to be realized, forI shall die for you,” and, taking the morsel inmy mouth, I devoured it.


One by one I ate them all, nor ever didanything taste better than those tiny bits ofnourishment, within which I knew must liethe seeds of death—possibly of some hideous,torturing death.

As I sat quietly upon the floor of my prison,waiting for the end, my fingers by accidentcame in contact with the bit of paper in whichthe things had been wrapped; and as I idlyplayed with it, my mind roaming far back intothe past, that I might live again for a fewbrief moments before I died some of the manyhappy moments of a long and happy life, Ibecame aware of strange protuberances uponthe smooth surface of the parchment-like sub-stance in my hands.

For a time they carried no special signifi-cance to my mind—I merely was mildly won-drous that they were there; but at last theyseemed to take form, and then I realized thatthere was but a single line of them, like writ-ing.

Now, more interestedly, my fingers tracedand retraced them. There were four sepa-rate and distinct combinations of raised lines.Could it be that these were four words, andthat they were intended to carry a message tome?

The more I thought of it the more excitedI became, until my fingers raced madly backand forth over those bewildering little hillsand valleys upon that bit of paper.

But I could make nothing of them, and atlast I decided that my very haste was prevent-ing me from solving the mystery. Then I took


it more slowly. Again and again my forefingertraced the first of those four combinations.

Martian writing is rather difficult to ex-plain to an Earth man—it is something of across between shorthand and picture-writing,and is an entirely different language from thespoken language of Mars.

Upon Barsoom there is but a single orallanguage.

It is spoken today by every race and na-tion, just as it was at the beginning of hu-man life upon Barsoom. It has grown withthe growth of the planet’s learning and sci-entific achievements, but so ingenious a thingit is that new words to express new thoughtsor describe new conditions or discoveries formthemselves—no other word could explain thething that a new word is required for otherthan the word that naturally falls to it, andso, no matter how far removed two nations orraces, their spoken languages are identical.

Not so their written languages, however.No two nations have the same written lan-guage, and often cities of the same nationhave a written language that differs greatlyfrom that of the nation to which they belong.

Thus it was that the signs upon the paper,if in reality they were words, baffled me forsome time; but at last I made out the first one.

It was “courage,” and it was written in theletters of Marentina.

Courage!That was the word the yellow guardsman

had whispered in my ear as I stood upon theverge of the Pit of Plenty.


The message must be from him, and he Iknew was a friend.

With renewed hope I bent my every en-ergy to the deciphering of the balance of themessage, and at last success rewarded myendeavor—I had read the four words:

“COURAGE! FOLLOW THE ROPE.”

“Follow the rope.”What could it mean?“Follow the rope.” What rope?Presently I recalled the cord that had been

attached to the parcel when it fell at my side,and after a little groping my hand came incontact with it again. It depended from above,and when I pulled upon it I discovered thatit was rigidly fastened, possibly at the pit’smouth.

Upon examination I found that the cord,though small, was amply able to sustain theweight of several men. Then I made anotherdiscovery—there was a second message knot-ted in the rope at about the height of my head.This I deciphered more easily, now that thekey was mine.

“BRING THE ROPE WITH YOU. BE-YOND THE KNOTS LIES DANGER.”

That was all there was to this mes-sage. It was evidently hastily formed—an af-terthought.

I did not pause longer than to learn thecontents of the second message, and, though


I was none too sure of the meaning of the fi-nal admonition, “Beyond the knots lies dan-ger,” yet I was sure that here before me lay anavenue of escape, and that the sooner I tookadvantage of it the more likely was I to win toliberty.

At least, I could be but little worse off thanI had been in the Pit of Plenty.

I was to find, however, ere I was well outof that damnable hole that I might have beenvery much worse off had I been compelled toremain there another two minutes.

It had taken me about that length of timeto ascend some fifty feet above the bottomwhen a noise above attracted my attention. Tomy chagrin I saw that the covering of the pitwas being removed far above me, and in thelight of the courtyard beyond I saw a numberof yellow warriors.

Could it be that I was laboriously workingmy way into some new trap? Were the mes-sages spurious, after all? And then, just as myhope and courage had ebbed to their lowest, Isaw two things.

One was the body of a huge, struggling,snarling apt being lowered over the side of thepit toward me, and the other was an aperturein the side of the shaft—an aperture largerthan a man’s body, into which my rope led.

Just as I scrambled into the dark hole be-fore me the apt passed me, reaching out withhis mighty hands to clutch me, and snapping,growling, and roaring in a most frightful man-ner.

Plainly now I saw the end for which Salen-


sus Oll had destined me. After first torturingme with starvation he had caused this fiercebeast to be lowered into my prison to finishthe work that the jeddak’s hellish imaginationhad conceived.

And then another truth flashed uponme—I had lived nine days of the allottedten which must intervene before Salensus Ollcould make Dejah Thoris his queen. The pur-pose of the apt was to insure my death beforethe tenth day.

I almost laughed aloud as I thought howSalensus Oll’s measure of safety was to aidin defeating the very end he sought, for whenthey discovered that the apt was alone in thePit of Plenty they could not know but that hehad completely devoured me, and so no suspi-cion of my escape would cause a search to bemade for me.

Coiling the rope that had carried me thusfar upon my strange journey, I sought for theother end, but found that as I followed it for-ward it extended always before me. So thiswas the meaning of the words: “Follow therope.”

The tunnel through which I crawled waslow and dark. I had followed it for severalhundred yards when I felt a knot beneath myfingers. “Beyond the knots lies danger.”

Now I went with the utmost caution, anda moment later a sharp turn in the tunnelbrought me to an opening into a large, bril-liantly lighted chamber.

The trend of the tunnel I had been travers-ing had been slightly upward, and from this


I judged that the chamber into which I nowfound myself looking must be either on thefirst floor of the palace or directly beneath thefirst floor.

Upon the opposite wall were many strangeinstruments and devices, and in the center ofthe room stood a long table, at which two menwere seated in earnest conversation.

He who faced me was a yellow man—a lit-tle, wizened-up, pasty-faced old fellow withgreat eyes that showed the white round theentire circumference of the iris.

His companion was a black man, and I didnot need to see his face to know that it wasThurid, for there was no other of the FirstBorn north of the ice-barrier.

Thurid was speaking as I came withinhearing of the men’s voices.

“Solan,” he was saying, “there is no riskand the reward is great. You know that youhate Salensus Oll and that nothing wouldplease you more than to thwart him in somecherished plan. There be nothing that hemore cherishes today than the idea of wed-ding the beautiful Princess of Helium; but I,too, want her, and with your help I may winher.

“You need not more than step from thisroom for an instant when I give you the signal.I will do the rest, and then, when I am gone,you may come and throw the great switchback into its place, and all will be as before.I need but an hour’s start to be safe beyondthe devilish power that you control in this hid-den chamber beneath the palace of your mas-


ter. See how easy,” and with the words theblack dator rose from his seat and, crossingthe room, laid his hand upon a large, bur-nished lever that protruded from the oppositewall.

“No! No!” cried the little old man, spring-ing after him, with a wild shriek. “Not thatone! Not that one! That controls the sunraytanks, and should you pull it too far down, allKadabra would be consumed by heat before Icould replace it. Come away! Come away! Youknow not with what mighty powers you play.This is the lever that you seek. Note well thesymbol inlaid in white upon its ebon surface.”

Thurid approached and examined the han-dle of the lever.

“Ah, a magnet,” he said. “I will remember.It is settled then I take it,” he continued.

The old man hesitated. A look of combinedgreed and apprehension overspread his nonetoo beautiful features.

“Double the figure,” he said. “Even thatwere all too small an amount for the serviceyou ask. Why, I risk my life by even entertain-ing you here within the forbidden precincts ofmy station. Should Salensus Oll learn of it hewould have me thrown to the apts before theday was done.”

“He dare not do that, and you know itfull well, Solan,” contradicted the black. “Toogreat a power of life and death you hold overthe people of Kadabra for Salensus Oll ever torisk threatening you with death. Before everhis minions could lay their hands upon you,you might seize this very lever from which you


have just warned me and wipe out the entirecity.”

“And myself into the bargain,” said Solan,with a shudder.

“But if you were to die, anyway, you wouldfind the nerve to do it,” replied Thurid.

“Yes,” muttered Solan, “I have oftenthought upon that very thing. Well, FirstBorn, is your red princess worth the price Iask for my services, or will you go without herand see her in the arms of Salensus Oll tomor-row night?”

“Take your price, yellow man,” repliedThurid, with an oath. “Half now and the bal-ance when you have fulfilled your contract.”

With that the dator threw a well-filledmoney-pouch upon the table.

Solan opened the pouch and with trem-bling fingers counted its contents. His weirdeyes assumed a greedy expression, and hisunkempt beard and mustache twitched withthe muscles of his mouth and chin. Itwas quite evident from his very mannerismthat Thurid had keenly guessed the man’sweakness—even the clawlike, clutching move-ment of the fingers betokened the avaricious-ness of the miser.

Having satisfied himself that the amountwas correct, Solan replaced the money in thepouch and rose from the table.

“Now,” he said, “are you quite sure that youknow the way to your destination? You musttravel quickly to cover the ground to the caveand from thence beyond the Great Power, allwithin a brief hour, for no more dare I spare


you.”“Let me repeat it to you,” said Thurid,

“that you may see if I be letter-perfect.”“Proceed,” replied Solan.“Through yonder door,” he commenced,

pointing to a door at the far end of the apart-ment, “I follow a corridor, passing three di-verging corridors upon my right; then into thefourth right-hand corridor straight to wherethree corridors meet; here again I follow to theright, hugging the left wall closely to avoid thepit.

“At the end of this corridor I shall come toa spiral runway, which I must follow down in-stead of up; after that the way is along but asingle branchless corridor. Am I right?”

“Quite right, Dator,” answered Solan; “andnow begone. Already have you tempted fatetoo long within this forbidden place.”

“Tonight, or tomorrow, then, you may ex-pect the signal,” said Thurid, rising to go.

“Tonight, or tomorrow,” repeated Solan,and as the door closed behind his guest the oldman continued to mutter as he turned backto the table, where he again dumped the con-tents of the money-pouch, running his fingersthrough the heap of shining metal; piling thecoins into little towers; counting, recounting,and fondling the wealth the while he mut-tered on and on in a crooning undertone.

Presently his fingers ceased their play; hiseyes popped wider than ever as they fastenedupon the door through which Thurid had dis-appeared. The croon changed to a querulousmuttering, and finally to an ugly growl.


Then the old man rose from the table,shaking his fist at the closed door. Now heraised his voice, and his words came distinctly.

“Fool!” he muttered. “Think you that foryour happiness Solan will give up his life? Ifyou escaped, Salensus Oll would know thatonly through my connivance could you havesucceeded. Then would he send for me. Whatwould you have me do? Reduce the city andmyself to ashes? No, fool, there is a bet-ter way—a better way for Solan to keep thymoney and be revenged upon Salensus Oll.”

He laughed in a nasty, cackling note.“Poor fool! You may throw the great switch

that will give you the freedom of the air ofOkar, and then, in fatuous security, go on withthy red princess to the freedom of—death.When you have passed beyond this chamberin your flight, what can prevent Solan replac-ing the switch as it was before your vile handtouched it? Nothing; and then the Guardian ofthe North will claim you and your woman, andSalensus Oll, when he sees your dead bodies,will never dream that the hand of Solan hadaught to do with the thing.”

Then his voice dropped once more intomutterings that I could not translate, but Ihad heard enough to cause me to guess a greatdeal more, and I thanked the kind Providencethat had led me to this chamber at a timeso filled with importance to Dejah Thoris andmyself as this.

But how to pass the old man now! Thecord, almost invisible upon the floor, stretchedstraight across the apartment to a door upon


the far side.There was no other way of which I knew,

nor could I afford to ignore the advice to “fol-low the rope.” I must cross this room, but how-ever I should accomplish it undetected withthat old man in the very center of it baffledme.

Of course I might have sprung in uponhim and with my bare hands silenced him for-ever, but I had heard enough to convince methat with him alive the knowledge that I hadgained might serve me at some future mo-ment, while should I kill him and another bestationed in his place Thurid would not comehither with Dejah Thoris, as was quite evi-dently his intention.

As I stood in the dark shadow of the tun-nel’s end racking my brain for a feasible planthe while I watched, catlike, the old man’s ev-ery move, he took up the money-pouch andcrossed to one end of the apartment, where,bending to his knees, he fumbled with a panelin the wall.

Instantly I guessed that here was the hid-ing place in which he hoarded his wealth, andwhile he bent there, his back toward me, I en-tered the chamber upon tiptoe, and with theutmost stealth essayed to reach the oppositeside before he should complete his task andturn again toward the room’s center.

Scarcely thirty steps, all told, must I take,and yet it seemed to my overwrought imagi-nation that that farther wall was miles away;but at last I reached it, nor once had I takenmy eyes from the back of the old miser’s head.


He did not turn until my hand was uponthe button that controlled the door throughwhich my way led, and then he turned awayfrom me as I passed through and gently closedthe door.

For an instant I paused, my ear close tothe panel, to learn if he had suspected aught,but as no sound of pursuit came from withinI wheeled and made my way along the newcorridor, following the rope, which I coiled andbrought with me as I advanced.

But a short distance farther on I came tothe rope’s end at a point where five corridorsmet. What was I to do? Which way should Iturn? I was nonplused.

A careful examination of the end of therope revealed the fact that it had been cleanlycut with some sharp instrument. This factand the words that had cautioned me thatdanger lay beyond the knots convinced methat the rope had been severed since myfriend had placed it as my guide, for I had butpassed a single knot, whereas there had evi-dently been two or more in the entire lengthof the cord.

Now, indeed, was I in a pretty fix, for nei-ther did I know which avenue to follow norwhen danger lay directly in my path; butthere was nothing else to be done than followone of the corridors, for I could gain nothingby remaining where I was.

So I chose the central opening, and passedon into its gloomy depths with a prayer uponmy lips.

The floor of the tunnel rose rapidly as I ad-


vanced, and a moment later the way came toan abrupt end before a heavy door.

I could hear nothing beyond, and, with myaccustomed rashness, pushed the portal wideto step into a room filled with yellow warriors.

The first to see me opened his eyes widein astonishment, and at the same instant Ifelt the tingling sensation in my finger thatdenoted the presence of a friend of the ring.

Then others saw me, and there was a con-certed rush to lay hands upon me, for thesewere all members of the palace guard—menfamiliar with my face.

The first to reach me was the wearer ofthe mate to my strange ring, and as he cameclose he whispered: “Surrender to me!” thenin a loud voice shouted: “You are my pris-oner, white man,” and menaced me with histwo weapons.

And so John Carter, Prince of Helium,meekly surrendered to a single antagonist.The others now swarmed about us, askingmany questions, but I would not talk to them,and finally my captor announced that hewould lead me back to my cell.

An officer ordered several other warriorsto accompany him, and a moment later wewere retracing the way I had just come. Myfriend walked close beside me, asking manysilly questions about the country from whichI had come, until finally his fellows paid nofurther attention to him or his gabbling.

Gradually, as he spoke, he lowered hisvoice, so that presently he was able to con-verse with me in a low tone without attract-


ing attention. His ruse was a clever one,and showed that Talu had not misjudged theman’s fitness for the dangerous duty uponwhich he was detailed.

When he had fully assured himself thatthe other guardsmen were not listening, heasked me why I had not followed the rope, andwhen I told him that it had ended at the fivecorridors he said that it must have been cut bysomeone in need of a piece of rope, for he wassure that “the stupid Kadabrans would neverhave guessed its purpose.”

Before we had reached the spot from whichthe five corridors diverge my Marentinianfriend had managed to drop to the rear of thelittle column with me, and when we came insight of the branching ways he whispered:

“Run up the first upon the right. It leadsto the watchtower upon the south wall. I willdirect the pursuit up the next corridor,” andwith that he gave me a great shove into thedark mouth of the tunnel, at the same timecrying out in simulated pain and alarm as hethrew himself upon the floor as though I hadfelled him with a blow.

From behind the voices of the excitedguardsmen came reverberating along the cor-ridor, suddenly growing fainter as Talu’s spyled them up the wrong passageway in fanciedpursuit.

As I ran for my life through the dark gal-leries beneath the palace of Salensus Oll Imust indeed have presented a remarkable ap-pearance had there been any to note it, forthough death loomed large about me, my face


was split by a broad grin as I thought of theresourcefulness of the nameless hero of Mar-entina to whom I owed my life.

Of such stuff are the men of my belovedHelium, and when I meet another of theirkind, of whatever race or color, my heart goesout to him as it did now to my new friend whohad risked his life for me simply because Iwore the mate to the ring his ruler had putupon his finger.

The corridor along which I ran led almoststraight for a considerable distance, terminat-ing at the foot of a spiral runway, up which Iproceeded to emerge presently into a circularchamber upon the first floor of a tower.

In this apartment a dozen red slaves wereemployed polishing or repairing the weaponsof the yellow men. The walls of the room werelined with racks in which were hundreds ofstraight and hooked swords, javelins, and dag-gers. It was evidently an armory. There werebut three warriors guarding the workers.

My eyes took in the entire scene at aglance. Here were weapons in plenty! Herewere sinewy red warriors to wield them!

And here now was John Carter, Prince ofHelium, in need both of weapons and war-riors!

As I stepped into the apartment, guardsand prisoners saw me simultaneously.

Close to the entrance where I stood was arack of straight swords, and as my hand closedupon the hilt of one of them my eyes fell uponthe faces of two of the prisoners who workedside by side.


One of the guards started toward me.“Who are you?” he demanded. “What do youhere?”

“I come for Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium,and his son, Mors Kajak,” I cried, pointing tothe two red prisoners, who had now sprungto their feet, wide-eyed in astonished recogni-tion.

“Rise, red men! Before we die let us leavea memorial in the palace of Okar’s tyrant thatwill stand forever in the annals of Kadabra tothe honor and glory of Helium,” for I had seenthat all the prisoners there were men of Tar-dos Mors’s navy.

Then the first guardsman was upon meand the fight was on, but scarce did we engageere, to my horror, I saw that the red slaveswere shackled to the floor.

THE MAGNETSWITCH

The guardsmen paid not the slightest atten-tion to their wards, for the red men could notmove over two feet from the great rings towhich they were padlocked, though each hadseized a weapon upon which he had been en-gaged when I entered the room, and stoodready to join me could they have but done so.

The yellow men devoted all their attentionto me, nor were they long in discovering thatthe three of them were none too many to de-fend the armory against John Carter. Wouldthat I had had my own good long-sword in myhand that day; but, as it was, I rendered asatisfactory account of myself with the unfa-miliar weapon of the yellow man.

At first I had a time of it dodging theirvillainous hook-swords, but after a minuteor two I had succeeded in wresting a secondstraight sword from one of the racks alongthe wall, and thereafter, using it to parry thehooks of my antagonists, I felt more evenlyequipped.

The three of them were on me at once, and

183


but for a lucky circumstance my end mighthave come quickly. The foremost guardsmanmade a vicious lunge for my side with his hookafter the three of them had backed me againstthe wall, but as I sidestepped and raised myarm his weapon but grazed my side, passinginto a rack of javelins, where it became entan-gled.

Before he could release it I had run himthrough, and then, falling back upon the tac-tics that have saved me a hundred times intight pinches, I rushed the two remainingwarriors, forcing them back with a perfect tor-rent of cuts and thrusts, weaving my sword inand out about their guards until I had the fearof death upon them.

Then one of them commenced calling forhelp, but it was too late to save them.

They were as putty in my hands now, and Ibacked them about the armory as I would un-til I had them where I wanted them—withinreach of the swords of the shackled slaves. Inan instant both lay dead upon the floor. Buttheir cries had not been entirely fruitless, fornow I heard answering shouts and the foot-falls of many men running and the clank ofaccoutrements and the commands of officers.

“The door! Quick, John Carter, bar thedoor!” cried Tardos Mors.

Already the guard was in sight, chargingacross the open court that was visible throughthe doorway.

A dozen seconds would bring them into thetower. A single leap carried me to the heavyportal. With a resounding bang I slammed it


shut.“The bar!” shouted Tardos Mors.I tried to slip the huge fastening into place,

but it defied my every attempt.“Raise it a little to release the catch,” cried

one of the red men.I could hear the yellow warriors leaping

along the flagging just beyond the door. Iraised the bar and shot it to the right just asthe foremost of the guardsmen threw himselfagainst the opposite side of the massive pan-els.

The barrier held—I had been in time, butby the fraction of a second only.

Now I turned my attention to the prison-ers. To Tardos Mors I went first, asking wherethe keys might be which would unfasten theirfetters.

“The officer of the guard has them,” repliedthe Jeddak of Helium, “and he is among thosewithout who seek entrance. You will have toforce them.”

Most of the prisoners were already hack-ing at their bonds with the swords in theirhands. The yellow men were battering at thedoor with javelins and axes.

I turned my attention to the chains thatheld Tardos Mors. Again and again I cut deepinto the metal with my sharp blade, but everfaster and faster fell the torrent of blows uponthe portal.

At last a link parted beneath my efforts,and a moment later Tardos Mors was free,though a few inches of trailing chain still dan-gled from his ankle.


A splinter of wood falling inward from thedoor announced the headway that our ene-mies were making toward us.

The mighty panels trembled and bent be-neath the furious onslaught of the enragedyellow men.

What with the battering upon the door andthe hacking of the red men at their chainsthe din within the armory was appalling. Nosooner was Tardos Mors free than he turnedhis attention to another of the prisoners, whileI set to work to liberate Mors Kajak.

We must work fast if we would have allthose fetters cut before the door gave way.Now a panel crashed inward upon the floor,and Mors Kajak sprang to the opening to de-fend the way until we should have time to re-lease the others.

With javelins snatched from the wall hewrought havoc among the foremost of theOkarians while we battled with the insensatemetal that stood between our fellows and free-dom.

At length all but one of the prisoners werefreed, and then the door fell with a mightycrash before a hastily improvised battering-ram, and the yellow horde was upon us.

“To the upper chambers!” shouted the redman who was still fettered to the floor. “Tothe upper chambers! There you may defendthe tower against all Kadabra. Do not delaybecause of me, who could pray for no betterdeath than in the service of Tardos Mors andthe Prince of Helium.”

But I would have sacrificed the life of every


man of us rather than desert a single red man,much less the lion-hearted hero who beggedus to leave him.

“Cut his chains,” I cried to two of the redmen, “while the balance of us hold off the foe.”

There were ten of us now to do battle withthe Okarian guard, and I warrant that thatancient watchtower never looked down upona more hotly contested battle than took placethat day within its own grim walls.

The first inrushing wave of yellow warriorsrecoiled from the slashing blades of ten of He-lium’s veteran fighting men. A dozen Okar-ian corpses blocked the doorway, but over thegruesome barrier a score more of their fellowsdashed, shouting their hoarse and hideouswar-cry.

Upon the bloody mound we met them,hand to hand, stabbing where the quarterswere too close to cut, thrusting when we couldpush a foeman to arm’s length; and mingledwith the wild cry of the Okarian there roseand fell the glorious words: “For Helium! ForHelium!” that for countless ages have spurredon the bravest of the brave to those deedsof valor that have sent the fame of Helium’sheroes broadcast throughout the length andbreadth of a world.

Now were the fetters struck from the lastof the red men, and thirteen strong we meteach new charge of the soldiers of SalensusOll. Scarce one of us but bled from a scoreof wounds, yet none had fallen.

From without we saw hundreds of guards-men pouring into the courtyard, and along the


lower corridor from which I had found my wayto the armory we could hear the clank of metaland the shouting of men.

In a moment we should be attacked fromtwo sides, and with all our prowess we couldnot hope to withstand the unequal odds whichwould thus divide our attention and our smallnumbers.

“To the upper chambers!” cried TardosMors, and a moment later we fell back towardthe runway that led to the floors above.

Here another bloody battle was wagedwith the force of yellow men who charged intothe armory as we fell back from the doorway.Here we lost our first man, a noble fellowwhom we could ill spare; but at length all hadbacked into the runway except myself, who re-mained to hold back the Okarians until theothers were safe above.

In the mouth of the narrow spiral but asingle warrior could attack me at a time, sothat I had little difficulty in holding them allback for the brief moment that was neces-sary. Then, backing slowly before them, I com-menced the ascent of the spiral.

All the long way to the tower’s top theguardsmen pressed me closely. When onewent down before my sword another scram-bled over the dead man to take his place; andthus, taking an awful toll with each few feetgained, I came to the spacious glass-walledwatchtower of Kadabra.

Here my companions clustered ready totake my place, and for a moment’s respite Istepped to one side while they held the enemy


off.From the lofty perch a view could be had

for miles in every direction. Toward the southstretched the rugged, ice-clad waste to theedge of the mighty barrier. Toward the eastand west, and dimly toward the north I de-scried other Okarian cities, while in the im-mediate foreground, just beyond the walls ofKadabra, the grim guardian shaft reared itssomber head.

Then I cast my eyes down into the streetsof Kadabra, from which a sudden tumult hadarisen, and there I saw a battle raging, andbeyond the city’s walls I saw armed menmarching in great columns toward a near-bygate.

Eagerly I pressed forward against theglass wall of the observatory, scarce daring tocredit the testimony of my own eyes. But atlast I could doubt no longer, and with a shoutof joy that rose strangely in the midst of thecursing and groaning of the battling men atthe entrance to the chamber, I called to Tar-dos Mors.

As he joined me I pointed down into thestreets of Kadabra and to the advancingcolumns beyond, above which floated bravelyin the arctic air the flags and banners of He-lium.

An instant later every red man in the loftychamber had seen the inspiring sight, andsuch a shout of thanksgiving arose as I war-rant never before echoed through that age-oldpile of stone.

But still we must fight on, for though our


troops had entered Kadabra, the city was yetfar from capitulation, nor had the palace beeneven assaulted. Turn and turn about we heldthe top of the runway while the others feastedtheir eyes upon the sight of our valiant coun-trymen battling far beneath us.

Now they have rushed the palace gate!Great battering-rams are dashed against itsformidable surface. Now they are repulsed bya deadly shower of javelins from the wall’s top!

Once again they charge, but a sortie by alarge force of Okarians from an intersectingavenue crumples the head of the column, andthe men of Helium go down, fighting, beneathan overwhelming force.

The palace gate flies open and a force ofthe jeddak’s own guard, picked men from theflower of the Okarian army, sallies forth toshatter the broken regiments. For a momentit looks as though nothing could avert defeat,and then I see a noble figure upon a mightythoat—not the tiny thoat of the red man, butone of his huge cousins of the dead sea bot-toms.

The warrior hews his way to the front,and behind him rally the disorganized sol-diers of Helium. As he raises his head aloft tofling a challenge at the men upon the palacewalls I see his face, and my heart swells inpride and happiness as the red warriors leapto the side of their leader and win back theground that they had but just lost—the faceof him upon the mighty thoat is the face of myson—Carthoris of Helium.

At his side fights a huge Martian war-


hound, nor did I need a second look to knowthat it was Woola—my faithful Woola whohad thus well performed his arduous task andbrought the succoring legions in the nick oftime.

“In the nick of time?”Who yet might say that they were not too

late to save, but surely they could avenge!And such retribution as that unconqueredarmy would deal out to the hateful Okarians!I sighed to think that I might not be alive towitness it.

Again I turned to the windows. Thered men had not yet forced the outer palacewall, but they were fighting nobly againstthe best that Okar afforded—valiant warriorswho contested every inch of the way.

Now my attention was caught by a newelement without the city wall—a great bodyof mounted warriors looming large above thered men. They were the huge green allies ofHelium—the savage hordes from the dead seabottoms of the far south.

In grim and terrible silence they spedon toward the gate, the padded hoofs oftheir frightful mounts giving forth no sound.Into the doomed city they charged, and asthey wheeled across the wide plaza beforethe palace of the Jeddak of Jeddaks I saw,riding at their head, the mighty figure oftheir mighty leader—Tars Tarkas, Jeddak ofThark.

My wish, then, was to be gratified, for Iwas to see my old friend battling once again,and though not shoulder to shoulder with


him, I, too, would be fighting in the samecause here in the high tower of Okar.

Nor did it seem that our foes would evercease their stubborn attacks, for still theycame, though the way to our chamber was of-ten clogged with the bodies of their dead. Attimes they would pause long enough to dragback the impeding corpses, and then freshwarriors would forge upward to taste the cupof death.

I had been taking my turn with the oth-ers in defending the approach to our lofty re-treat when Mors Kajak, who had been watch-ing the battle in the street below, called aloudin sudden excitement. There was a note ofapprehension in his voice that brought meto his side the instant that I could turn myplace over to another, and as I reached him hepointed far out across the waste of snow andice toward the southern horizon.

“Alas!” he cried, “that I should be forced towitness cruel fate betray them without powerto warn or aid; but they be past either now.”

As I looked in the direction he indicated Isaw the cause of his perturbation. A mightyfleet of fliers was approaching majestically to-ward Kadabra from the direction of the ice-barrier. On and on they came with ever in-creasing velocity.

“The grim shaft that they call theGuardian of the North is beckoning to them,”said Mors Kajak sadly, “just as it beckoned toTardos Mors and his great fleet; see wherethey lie, crumpled and broken, a grim andterrible monument to the mighty force of de-


struction which naught can resist.”I, too, saw; but something else I saw that

Mors Kajak did not; in my mind’s eye I saw aburied chamber whose walls were lined withstrange instruments and devices.

In the center of the chamber was a longtable, and before it sat a little, pop-eyed oldman counting his money; but, plainest of all, Isaw upon the wall a great switch with a smallmagnet inlaid within the surface of its blackhandle.

Then I glanced out at the fast-approachingfleet. In five minutes that mighty armada ofthe skies would be bent and worthless scrap,lying at the base of the shaft beyond the city’swall, and yellow hordes would be loosed fromanother gate to rush out upon the few sur-vivors stumbling blindly down through themass of wreckage; then the apts would come.I shuddered at the thought, for I could vividlypicture the whole horrible scene.

Quick have I always been to decide and act.The impulse that moves me and the doing ofthe thing seem simultaneous; for if my mindgoes through the tedious formality of reason-ing, it must be a subconscious act of which Iam not objectively aware. Psychologists tellme that, as the subconscious does not reason,too close a scrutiny of my mental activitiesmight prove anything but flattering; but bethat as it may, I have often won success whilethe thinker would have been still at the end-less task of comparing various judgments.

And now celerity of action was the primeessential to the success of the thing that I had


decided upon.Grasping my sword more firmly in my

hand, I called to the red man at the openingto the runway to stand aside.

“Way for the Prince of Helium!” I shouted;and before the astonished yellow man whosemisfortune it was to be at the fighting endof the line at that particular moment couldgather his wits together my sword had decap-itated him, and I was rushing like a mad bulldown upon those behind him.

“Way for the Prince of Helium!” I shoutedas I cut a path through the astonished guards-men of Salensus Oll.

Hewing to right and left, I beat my waydown that warrior-choked spiral until, nearthe bottom, those below, thinking that anarmy was descending upon them, turned andfled.

The armory at the first floor was vacantwhen I entered it, the last of the Okarianshaving fled into the courtyard, so none saw mecontinue down the spiral toward the corridorbeneath.

Here I ran as rapidly as my legs wouldcarry me toward the five corners, and thereplunged into the passageway that led to thestation of the old miser.

Without the formality of a knock, I burstinto the room. There sat the old man at histable; but as he saw me he sprang to his feet,drawing his sword.

With scarce more than a glance towardhim I leaped for the great switch; but, quickas I was, that wiry old fellow was there before


me.How he did it I shall never know, nor does

it seem credible that any Martian-born crea-ture could approximate the marvelous speedof my earthly muscles.

Like a tiger he turned upon me, and I wasquick to see why Solan had been chosen forthis important duty.

Never in all my life have I seen suchwondrous swordsmanship and such uncannyagility as that ancient bag of bones displayed.He was in forty places at the same time, andbefore I had half a chance to awaken to mydanger he was like to have made a monkey ofme, and a dead monkey at that.

It is strange how new and unexpected con-ditions bring out unguessed ability to meetthem.

That day in the buried chamber beneaththe palace of Salensus Oll I learned whatswordsmanship meant, and to what heightsof sword mastery I could achieve when pittedagainst such a wizard of the blade as Solan.

For a time he liked to have bested me; butpresently the latent possibilities that musthave been lying dormant within me for a life-time came to the fore, and I fought as I hadnever dreamed a human being could fight.

That that duel-royal should have takenplace in the dark recesses of a cellar, with-out a single appreciative eye to witness ithas always seemed to me almost a worldcalamity—at least from the viewpoint Bar-soomian, where bloody strife is the first andgreatest consideration of individuals, nations,


and races.I was fighting to reach the switch, Solan to

prevent me; and, though we stood not threefeet from it, I could not win an inch toward it,for he forced me back an inch for the first fiveminutes of our battle.

I knew that if I were to throw it in time tosave the oncoming fleet it must be done in thenext few seconds, and so I tried my old rush-ing tactics; but I might as well have rushed abrick wall for all that Solan gave way.

In fact, I came near to impaling myselfupon his point for my pains; but right wason my side, and I think that that must give aman greater confidence than though he knewhimself to be battling in a wicked cause.

At least, I did not want in confidence; andwhen I next rushed Solan it was to one sidewith implicit confidence that he must turnto meet my new line of attack, and turn hedid, so that now we fought with our sidestowards the coveted goal—the great switchstood within my reach upon my right hand.

To uncover my breast for an instant wouldhave been to court sudden death, but I sawno other way than to chance it, if by so doingI might rescue that oncoming, succoring fleet;and so, in the face of a wicked sword-thrust,I reached out my point and caught the greatswitch a sudden blow that released it from itsseating.

So surprised and horrified was Solanthat he forgot to finish his thrust; instead,he wheeled toward the switch with a loudshriek—a shriek which was his last, for before


his hand could touch the lever it sought, mysword’s point had passed through his heart.

THE TIDE OFBATTLE

But Solan’s last loud cry had not been with-out effect, for a moment later a dozen guards-men burst into the chamber, though not be-fore I had so bent and demolished the greatswitch that it could not be again used to turnthe powerful current into the mighty magnetof destruction it controlled.

The result of the sudden coming of theguardsmen had been to compel me to seekseclusion in the first passageway that I couldfind, and that to my disappointment proved tobe not the one with which I was familiar, butanother upon its left.

They must have either heard or guessedwhich way I went, for I had proceeded but ashort distance when I heard the sound of pur-suit. I had no mind to stop and fight thesemen here when there was fighting aplentyelsewhere in the city of Kadabra—fightingthat could be of much more avail to me andmine than useless life-taking far below thepalace.

But the fellows were pressing me; and as

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I did not know the way at all, I soon saw thatthey would overtake me unless I found a placeto conceal myself until they had passed, whichwould then give me an opportunity to returnthe way I had come and regain the tower, orpossibly find a way to reach the city streets.

The passageway had risen rapidly sinceleaving the apartment of the switch, and nowran level and well lighted straight into the dis-tance as far as I could see. The moment thatmy pursuers reached this straight stretch Iwould be in plain sight of them, with nochance to escape from the corridor undetected.

Presently I saw a series of doors openingfrom either side of the corridor, and as they alllooked alike to me I tried the first one that Ireached. It opened into a small chamber, luxu-riously furnished, and was evidently an ante-chamber off some office or audience chamberof the palace.

On the far side was a heavily curtaineddoorway beyond which I heard the hum ofvoices. Instantly I crossed the small chamber,and, parting the curtains, looked within thelarger apartment.

Before me were a party of perhaps fiftygorgeously clad nobles of the court, standingbefore a throne upon which sat Salensus Oll.The Jeddak of Jeddaks was addressing them.

“The allotted hour has come,” he was say-ing as I entered the apartment; “and thoughthe enemies of Okar be within her gates,naught may stay the will of Salensus Oll. Thegreat ceremony must be omitted that no sin-gle man may be kept from his place in the


defenses other than the fifty that custom de-mands shall witness the creation of a newqueen in Okar.

“In a moment the thing shall have beendone and we may return to the battle, whileshe who is now the Princess of Helium looksdown from the queen’s tower upon the anni-hilation of her former countrymen and wit-nesses the greatness which is her husband’s.”

Then, turning to a courtier, he issued somecommand in a low voice.

The addressed hastened to a small doorat the far end of the chamber and, swingingit wide, cried: “Way for Dejah Thoris, futureQueen of Okar!”

Immediately two guardsmen appeareddragging the unwilling bride toward the altar.Her hands were still manacled behind her, ev-idently to prevent suicide.

Her disheveled hair and panting bosom be-tokened that, chained though she was, stillhad she fought against the thing that theywould do to her.

At sight of her Salensus Oll rose and drewhis sword, and the sword of each of the fiftynobles was raised on high to form an arch, be-neath which the poor, beautiful creature wasdragged toward her doom.

A grim smile forced itself to my lips asI thought of the rude awakening that lay instore for the ruler of Okar, and my itching fin-gers fondled the hilt of my bloody sword.

As I watched the procession that movedslowly toward the throne—a processionwhich consisted of but a handful of priests,


who followed Dejah Thoris and the twoguardsmen—I caught a fleeting glimpse of ablack face peering from behind the draperiesthat covered the wall back of the dais uponwhich stood Salensus Oll awaiting his bride.

Now the guardsmen were forcing thePrincess of Helium up the few steps to the sideof the tyrant of Okar, and I had no eyes andno thoughts for aught else. A priest openeda book and, raising his hand, commenced todrone out a sing-song ritual. Salensus Ollreached for the hand of his bride.

I had intended waiting until some circum-stance should give me a reasonable hope ofsuccess; for, even though the entire ceremonyshould be completed, there could be no validmarriage while I lived. What I was most con-cerned in, of course, was the rescuing of DejahThoris—I wished to take her from the palaceof Salensus Oll, if such a thing were possible;but whether it were accomplished before or af-ter the mock marriage was a matter of sec-ondary import.

When, however, I saw the vile handof Salensus Oll reach out for the hand ofmy beloved princess I could restrain myselfno longer, and before the nobles of Okarknew that aught had happened I had leapedthrough their thin line and was upon the daisbeside Dejah Thoris and Salensus Oll.

With the flat of my sword I struck downhis polluting hand; and grasping Dejah Tho-ris round the waist, I swung her behind meas, with my back against the draperies of thedais, I faced the tyrant of the north and his


roomful of noble warriors.The Jeddak of Jeddaks was a great moun-

tain of a man—a coarse, brutal beast of aman—and as he towered above me there, hisfierce black whiskers and mustache bristlingin rage, I can well imagine that a less sea-soned warrior might have trembled beforehim.

With a snarl he sprang toward me withnaked sword, but whether Salensus Oll was agood swordsman or a poor I never learned; forwith Dejah Thoris at my back I was no longerhuman—I was a superman, and no man couldhave withstood me then.

With a single, low: “For the Princess of He-lium!” I ran my blade straight through the rot-ten heart of Okar’s rotten ruler, and before thewhite, drawn faces of his nobles Salensus Ollrolled, grinning in horrible death, to the footof the steps below his marriage throne.

For a moment tense silence reigned in thenuptial-room. Then the fifty nobles rushedupon me. Furiously we fought, but the ad-vantage was mine, for I stood upon a raisedplatform above them, and I fought for themost glorious woman of a glorious race, andI fought for a great love and for the mother ofmy boy.

And from behind my shoulder, in the sil-very cadence of that dear voice, rose the bravebattle anthem of Helium which the nation’swomen sing as their men march out to victory.

That alone was enough to inspire me tovictory over even greater odds, and I verilybelieve that I should have bested the entire


roomful of yellow warriors that day in thenuptial chamber of the palace at Kadabra hadnot interruption come to my aid.

Fast and furious was the fighting as the no-bles of Salensus Oll sprang, time and again,up the steps before the throne only to fallback before a sword hand that seemed to havegained a new wizardry from its experiencewith the cunning Solan.

Two were pressing me so closely that Icould not turn when I heard a movement be-hind me, and noted that the sound of the bat-tle anthem had ceased. Was Dejah Thorispreparing to take her place beside me?

Heroic daughter of a heroic world! It wouldnot be unlike her to have seized a sword andfought at my side, for, though the women ofMars are not trained in the arts of war, thespirit is theirs, and they have been known todo that very thing upon countless occasions.

But she did not come, and glad I was, forit would have doubled my burden in protect-ing her before I should have been able to forceher back again out of harm’s way. She mustbe contemplating some cunning strategy, Ithought, and so I fought on secure in the be-lief that my divine princess stood close behindme.

For half an hour at least I must havefought there against the nobles of Okar ereever a one placed a foot upon the dais where Istood, and then of a sudden all that remainedof them formed below me for a last, mad, des-perate charge; but even as they advanced thedoor at the far end of the chamber swung wide


and a wild-eyed messenger sprang into theroom.

“The Jeddak of Jeddaks!” he cried. “Whereis the Jeddak of Jeddaks? The city has fallenbefore the hordes from beyond the barrier, andbut now the great gate of the palace itself hasbeen forced and the warriors of the south arepouring into its sacred precincts.

“Where is Salensus Oll? He alone may re-vive the flagging courage of our warriors. Healone may save the day for Okar. Where isSalensus Oll?”

The nobles stepped back from about thedead body of their ruler, and one of thempointed to the grinning corpse.

The messenger staggered back in horror asthough from a blow in the face.

“Then fly, nobles of Okar!” he cried, “fornaught can save you. Hark! They come!”

As he spoke we heard the deep roar of an-gry men from the corridor without, and theclank of metal and the clang of swords.

Without another glance toward me, whohad stood a spectator of the tragic scene, thenobles wheeled and fled from the apartmentthrough another exit.

Almost immediately a force of yellow war-riors appeared in the doorway through whichthe messenger had come. They were backingtoward the apartment, stubbornly resistingthe advance of a handful of red men who facedthem and forced them slowly but inevitablyback.

Above the heads of the contestants I couldsee from my elevated station upon the dais


the face of my old friend Kantos Kan. He wasleading the little party that had won its wayinto the very heart of the palace of SalensusOll.

In an instant I saw that by attacking theOkarians from the rear I could so quickly dis-organize them that their further resistancewould be short-lived, and with this idea inmind I sprang from the dais, casting a wordof explanation to Dejah Thoris over my shoul-der, though I did not turn to look at her.

With myself ever between her enemies andherself, and with Kantos Kan and his warriorswinning to the apartment, there could be nodanger to Dejah Thoris standing there alonebeside the throne.

I wanted the men of Helium to see me andto know that their beloved princess was here,too, for I knew that this knowledge wouldinspire them to even greater deeds of valorthan they had performed in the past, thoughgreat indeed must have been those which wonfor them a way into the almost impregnablepalace of the tyrant of the north.

As I crossed the chamber to attack theKadabrans from the rear a small doorway atmy left opened, and, to my surprise, revealedthe figures of Matai Shang, Father of Thernsand Phaidor, his daughter, peering into theroom.

A quick glance about they took. Their eyesrested for a moment, wide in horror, upon thedead body of Salensus Oll, upon the blood thatcrimsoned the floor, upon the corpses of thenobles who had fallen thick before the throne,


upon me, and upon the battling warriors atthe other door.

They did not essay to enter the apartment,but scanned its every corner from where theystood, and then, when their eyes had soughtits entire area, a look of fierce rage overspreadthe features of Matai Shang, and a cold andcunning smile touched the lips of Phaidor.

Then they were gone, but not before ataunting laugh was thrown directly in my faceby the woman.

I did not understand then the meaning ofMatai Shang’s rage or Phaidor’s pleasure, butI knew that neither boded good for me.

A moment later I was upon the backs of theyellow men, and as the red men of Helium sawme above the shoulders of their antagonists agreat shout rang through the corridor, and fora moment drowned the noise of battle.

“For the Prince of Helium!” they cried. “Forthe Prince of Helium!” and, like hungry lionsupon their prey, they fell once more upon theweakening warriors of the north.

The yellow men, cornered between two en-emies, fought with the desperation that ut-ter hopelessness often induces. Fought as Ishould have fought had I been in their stead,with the determination to take as many of myenemies with me when I died as lay within thepower of my sword arm.

It was a glorious battle, but the endseemed inevitable, when presently from downthe corridor behind the red men came a greatbody of reenforcing yellow warriors.

Now were the tables turned, and it was


the men of Helium who seemed doomed to beground between two millstones. All were com-pelled to turn to meet this new assault by agreatly superior force, so that to me was leftthe remnants of the yellow men within thethroneroom.

They kept me busy, too; so busy that I be-gan to wonder if indeed I should ever be donewith them. Slowly they pressed me back intothe room, and when they had all passed in af-ter me, one of them closed and bolted the door,effectually barring the way against the men ofKantos Kan.

It was a clever move, for it put me at themercy of a dozen men within a chamber fromwhich assistance was locked out, and it gavethe red men in the corridor beyond no avenueof escape should their new antagonists pressthem too closely.

But I have faced heavier odds myself thanwere pitted against me that day, and I knewthat Kantos Kan had battled his way from ahundred more dangerous traps than that inwhich he now was. So it was with no feelingsof despair that I turned my attention to thebusiness of the moment.

Constantly my thoughts reverted to DejahThoris, and I longed for the moment when, thefighting done, I could fold her in my arms, andhear once more the words of love which hadbeen denied me for so many years.

During the fighting in the chamber I hadnot even a single chance to so much as steala glance at her where she stood behind mebeside the throne of the dead ruler. I won-


dered why she no longer urged me on with thestrains of the martial hymn of Helium; but Idid not need more than the knowledge that Iwas battling for her to bring out the best thatis in me.

It would be wearisome to narrate the de-tails of that bloody struggle; of how we foughtfrom the doorway, the full length of the roomto the very foot of the throne before the last ofmy antagonists fell with my blade piercing hisheart.

And then, with a glad cry, I turned withoutstretched arms to seize my princess, andas my lips smothered hers to reap the rewardthat would be thrice ample payment for thebloody encounters through which I had passedfor her dear sake from the south pole to thenorth.

The glad cry died, frozen upon my lips; myarms dropped limp and lifeless to my sides; asone who reels beneath the burden of a mor-tal wound I staggered up the steps before thethrone.

Dejah Thoris was gone.

REWARDS

With the realization that Dejah Thoris wasno longer within the throneroom came the be-lated recollection of the dark face that I hadglimpsed peering from behind the draperiesthat backed the throne of Salensus Oll at themoment that I had first come so unexpectedlyupon the strange scene being enacted withinthe chamber.

Why had the sight of that evil countenancenot warned me to greater caution? Why had Ipermitted the rapid development of new situ-ations to efface the recollection of that menac-ing danger? But, alas, vain regret would noterase the calamity that had befallen.

Once again had Dejah Thoris fallen intothe clutches of that archfiend, Thurid, theblack dator of the First Born. Again was allmy arduous labor gone for naught. Now I re-alized the cause of the rage that had been writso large upon the features of Matai Shang andthe cruel pleasure that I had seen upon theface of Phaidor.

They had known or guessed the truth, andthe hekkador of the Holy Therns, who had ev-idently come to the chamber in the hope of

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thwarting Salensus Oll in his contemplatedperfidy against the high priest who covetedDejah Thoris for himself, realized that Thuridhad stolen the prize from beneath his verynose.

Phaidor’s pleasure had been due to her re-alization of what this last cruel blow wouldmean to me, as well as to a partial satisfac-tion of her jealous hatred for the Princess ofHelium.

My first thought was to look beyond thedraperies at the back of the throne, for thereit was that I had seen Thurid. With a singlejerk I tore the priceless stuff from its fasten-ings, and there before me was revealed a nar-row doorway behind the throne.

No question entered my mind but thathere lay the opening of the avenue of escapewhich Thurid had followed, and had therebeen it would have been dissipated by thesight of a tiny, jeweled ornament which lay afew steps within the corridor beyond.

As I snatched up the bauble I saw that itbore the device of the Princess of Helium, andthen pressing it to my lips I dashed madlyalong the winding way that led gently down-ward toward the lower galleries of the palace.

I had followed but a short distance when Icame upon the room in which Solan formerlyhad held sway. His dead body still lay where Ihad left it, nor was there any sign that an-other had passed through the room since Ihad been there; but I knew that two had doneso—Thurid, the black dator, and Dejah Tho-ris.

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For a moment I paused uncertain as towhich of the several exits from the apartmentwould lead me upon the right path. I triedto recollect the directions which I had heardThurid repeat to Solan, and at last, slowly, asthough through a heavy fog, the memory ofthe words of the First Born came to me:

“Follow a corridor, passing three divergingcorridors upon the right; then into the fourthright-hand corridor to where three corridorsmeet; here again follow to the right, huggingthe left wall closely to avoid the pit. At the endof this corridor I shall come to a spiral runwaywhich I must follow down instead of up; afterthat the way is along but a single branchlesscorridor.”

And I recalled the exit at which he hadpointed as he spoke.

It did not take me long to start upon thatunknown way, nor did I go with caution, al-though I knew that there might be grave dan-gers before me.

Part of the way was black as sin, but forthe most it was fairly well lighted. The stretchwhere I must hug the left wall to avoid thepits was darkest of them all, and I was nearlyover the edge of the abyss before I knew thatI was near the danger spot. A narrow ledge,scarce a foot wide, was all that had been leftto carry the initiated past that frightful cavityinto which the unknowing must surely havetoppled at the first step. But at last I had wonsafely beyond it, and then a feeble light madethe balance of the way plain, until, at the endof the last corridor, I came suddenly out into


the glare of day upon a field of snow and ice.Clad for the warm atmosphere of the hot-

house city of Kadabra, the sudden change toarctic frigidity was anything but pleasant; butthe worst of it was that I knew I could not en-dure the bitter cold, almost naked as I was,and that I would perish before ever I couldovertake Thurid and Dejah Thoris.

To be thus blocked by nature, who had hadall the arts and wiles of cunning man pittedagainst him, seemed a cruel fate, and as Istaggered back into the warmth of the tun-nel’s end I was as near hopelessness as I everhave been.

I had by no means given up my intention ofcontinuing the pursuit, for if needs be I wouldgo ahead though I perished ere ever I reachedmy goal, but if there were a safer way it werewell worth the delay to attempt to discover it,that I might come again to the side of DejahThoris in fit condition to do battle for her.

Scarce had I returned to the tunnel thanI stumbled over a portion of a fur garmentthat seemed fastened to the floor of the cor-ridor close to the wall. In the darkness Icould not see what held it, but by groping withmy hands I discovered that it was wedged be-neath the bottom of a closed door.

Pushing the portal aside, I found myselfupon the threshold of a small chamber, thewalls of which were lined with hooks fromwhich depended suits of the complete outdoorapparel of the yellow men.

Situated as it was at the mouth of a tunnelleading from the palace, it was quite evident

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that this was the dressing-room used by thenobles leaving and entering the hothouse city,and that Thurid, having knowledge of it, hadstopped here to outfit himself and Dejah Tho-ris before venturing into the bitter cold of thearctic world beyond.

In his haste he had dropped several gar-ments upon the floor, and the telltale furthat had fallen partly within the corridor hadproved the means of guiding me to the veryspot he would least have wished me to haveknowledge of.

It required but the matter of a few sec-onds to don the necessary orluk-skin clothing,with the heavy, fur-lined boots that are so es-sential a part of the garmenture of one whowould successfully contend with the frozentrails and the icy winds of the bleak north-land.

Once more I stepped beyond the tunnel’smouth to find the fresh tracks of Thurid andDejah Thoris in the new-fallen snow. Now,at last, was my task an easy one, for thoughthe going was rough in the extreme, I was nolonger vexed by doubts as to the direction Ishould follow, or harassed by darkness or hid-den dangers.

Through a snow-covered canyon the wayled up toward the summit of low hills. Beyondthese it dipped again into another canyon,only to rise a quarter-mile farther on toward apass which skirted the flank of a rocky hill.

I could see by the signs of those whohad gone before that when Dejah Thorishad walked she had been continually holding


back, and that the black man had been com-pelled to drag her. For other stretches onlyhis foot-prints were visible, deep and close to-gether in the heavy snow, and I knew fromthese signs that then he had been forced tocarry her, and I could well imagine that shehad fought him fiercely every step of the way.

As I came round the jutting promontory ofthe hill’s shoulder I saw that which quickenedmy pulses and set my heart to beating high,for within a tiny basin between the crest ofthis hill and the next stood four people beforethe mouth of a great cave, and beside themupon the gleaming snow rested a flier whichhad evidently but just been dragged from itshiding place.

The four were Dejah Thoris, Phaidor,Thurid, and Matai Shang. The two men wereengaged in a heated argument—the Father ofTherns threatening, while the black scoffed athim as he went about the work at which hewas engaged.

As I crept toward them cautiously that Imight come as near as possible before beingdiscovered, I saw that finally the men ap-peared to have reached some sort of a compro-mise, for with Phaidor’s assistance they bothset about dragging the resisting Dejah Thoristo the flier’s deck.

Here they made her fast, and then bothagain descended to the ground to complete thepreparations for departure. Phaidor enteredthe small cabin upon the vessel’s deck.

I had come to within a quarter of a mileof them when Matai Shang espied me. I saw

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him seize Thurid by the shoulder, wheelinghim around in my direction as he pointed towhere I was now plainly visible, for the mo-ment that I knew I had been perceived I castaside every attempt at stealth and broke intoa mad race for the flier.

The two redoubled their efforts at the pro-peller at which they were working, and whichvery evidently was being replaced after hav-ing been removed for some purpose of repair.

They had the thing completed before I hadcovered half the distance that lay between meand them, and then both made a rush for theboarding-ladder.

Thurid was the first to reach it, and withthe agility of a monkey clambered swiftly tothe boat’s deck, where a touch of the buttoncontrolling the buoyancy tanks sent the craftslowly upward, though not with the speedthat marks the well-conditioned flier.

I was still some hundred yards away as Isaw them rising from my grasp.

Back by the city of Kadabra lay a greatfleet of mighty fliers—the ships of Helium andPtarth that I had saved from destruction ear-lier in the day; but before ever I could reachthem Thurid could easily make good his es-cape.

As I ran I saw Matai Shang clambering upthe swaying, swinging ladder toward the deck,while above him leaned the evil face of theFirst Born. A trailing rope from the vessel’sstern put new hope in me, for if I could butreach it before it whipped too high above myhead there was yet a chance to gain the deck


by its slender aid.That there was something radically wrong

with the flier was evident from its lack ofbuoyancy, and the further fact that thoughThurid had turned twice to the starting leverthe boat still hung motionless in the air, ex-cept for a slight drifting with a low breezefrom the north.

Now Matai Shang was close to the gun-wale. A long, claw-like hand was reaching upto grasp the metal rail.

Thurid leaned farther down toward his co-conspirator.

Suddenly a raised dagger gleamed in theupflung hand of the black. Down it drove to-ward the white face of the Father of Therns.With a loud shriek of fear the Holy Hekkadorgrasped frantically at that menacing arm.

I was almost to the trailing rope by now.The craft was still rising slowly, the while itdrifted from me. Then I stumbled on the icyway, striking my head upon a rock as I fellsprawling but an arm’s length from the rope,the end of which was now just leaving theground.

With the blow upon my head came uncon-sciousness.

It could not have been more than a fewseconds that I lay senseless there upon thenorthern ice, while all that was dearest to medrifted farther from my reach in the clutchesof that black fiend, for when I opened my eyesThurid and Matai Shang yet battled at theladder’s top, and the flier drifted but a hun-dred yards farther to the south—but the end

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of the trailing rope was now a good thirty feetabove the ground.

Goaded to madness by the cruel misfor-tune that had tripped me when success wasalmost within my grasp, I tore franticallyacross the intervening space, and just beneaththe rope’s dangling end I put my earthly mus-cles to the supreme test.

With a mighty, catlike bound I sprang up-ward toward that slender strand—the onlyavenue which yet remained that could carryme to my vanishing love.

A foot above its lowest end my fingersclosed. Tightly as I clung I felt the rope slip-ping, slipping through my grasp. I tried toraise my free hand to take a second hold abovemy first, but the change of position that re-sulted caused me to slip more rapidly towardthe end of the rope.

Slowly I felt the tantalizing thing escapingme. In a moment all that I had gained wouldbe lost—then my fingers reached a knot at thevery end of the rope and slipped no more.

With a prayer of gratitude upon my lips Iscrambled upward toward the boat’s deck. Icould not see Thurid and Matai Shang now,but I heard the sounds of conflict and thusknew that they still fought—the thern for hislife and the black for the increased buoyancythat relief from the weight of even a singlebody would give the craft.

Should Matai Shang die before I reachedthe deck my chances of ever reaching it wouldbe slender indeed, for the black dator need butcut the rope above me to be freed from me


forever, for the vessel had drifted across thebrink of a chasm into whose yawning depthsmy body would drop to be crushed to a shape-less pulp should Thurid reach the rope now.

At last my hand closed upon the ship’s railand that very instant a horrid shriek rang outbelow me that sent my blood cold and turnedmy horrified eyes downward to a shrieking,hurtling, twisting thing that shot downwardinto the awful chasm beneath me.

It was Matai Shang, Holy Hekkador, Fa-ther of Therns, gone to his last accounting.

Then my head came above the deck andI saw Thurid, dagger in hand, leaping to-ward me. He was opposite the forward endof the cabin, while I was attempting to clam-ber aboard near the vessel’s stern. But a fewpaces lay between us. No power on earth couldraise me to that deck before the infuriatedblack would be upon me.

My end had come. I knew it; but had therebeen a doubt in my mind the nasty leer of tri-umph upon that wicked face would have con-vinced me. Beyond Thurid I could see myDejah Thoris, wide-eyed and horrified, strug-gling at her bonds. That she should be forcedto witness my awful death made my bitter fateseem doubly cruel.

I ceased my efforts to climb across the gun-wale. Instead I took a firm grasp upon the railwith my left hand and drew my dagger.

I should at least die as I hadlived—fighting.

As Thurid came opposite the cabin’s door-way a new element projected itself into the

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grim tragedy of the air that was being enactedupon the deck of Matai Shang’s disabled flier.

It was Phaidor.With flushed face and disheveled hair, and

eyes that betrayed the recent presence of mor-tal tears—above which this proud goddesshad always held herself—she leaped to thedeck directly before me.

In her hand was a long, slim dagger. I casta last look upon my beloved princess, smiling,as men should who are about to die. Then Iturned my face up toward Phaidor—waitingfor the blow.

Never have I seen that beautiful face morebeautiful than it was at that moment. Itseemed incredible that one so lovely could yetharbor within her fair bosom a heart so crueland relentless, and today there was a new ex-pression in her wondrous eyes that I never be-fore had seen there—an unfamiliar softness,and a look of suffering.

Thurid was beside her now—pushing pastto reach me first, and then what happenedhappened so quickly that it was all over be-fore I could realize the truth of it.

Phaidor’s slim hand shot out to close uponthe black’s dagger wrist. Her right hand wenthigh with its gleaming blade.

“That for Matai Shang!” she cried, and sheburied her blade deep in the dator’s breast.“That for the wrong you would have done De-jah Thoris!” and again the sharp steel sankinto the bloody flesh.

“And that, and that, and that!” sheshrieked, “for John Carter, Prince of Helium,”


and with each word her sharp point piercedthe vile heart of the great villain. Then, witha vindictive shove she cast the carcass of theFirst Born from the deck to fall in awful si-lence after the body of his victim.

I had been so paralyzed by surprise thatI had made no move to reach the deck dur-ing the awe-inspiring scene which I had justwitnessed, and now I was to be still furtheramazed by her next act, for Phaidor extendedher hand to me and assisted me to the deck,where I stood gazing at her in unconcealedand stupefied wonderment.

A wan smile touched her lips—it was notthe cruel and haughty smile of the goddesswith which I was familiar. “You wonder, JohnCarter,” she said, “what strange thing haswrought this change in me? I will tell you. Itis love—love of you,” and when I darkened mybrows in disapproval of her words she raisedan appealing hand.

“Wait,” she said. “It is a different love frommine—it is the love of your princess, DejahThoris, for you that has taught me what truelove may be—what it should be, and how farfrom real love was my selfish and jealous pas-sion for you.

“Now I am different. Now could I love asDejah Thoris loves, and so my only happinesscan be to know that you and she are once moreunited, for in her alone can you find true hap-piness.

“But I am unhappy because of the wicked-ness that I have wrought. I have many sins toexpiate, and though I be deathless, life is all

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too short for the atonement.“But there is another way, and if Phaidor,

daughter of the Holy Hekkador of the HolyTherns, has sinned she has this day alreadymade partial reparation, and lest you doubtthe sincerity of her protestations and heravowal of a new love that embraces DejahThoris also, she will prove her sincerity in theonly way that lies open—having saved you foranother, Phaidor leaves you to her embraces.”

With her last word she turned and leapedfrom the vessel’s deck into the abyss below.

With a cry of horror I sprang forward in avain attempt to save the life that for two yearsI would so gladly have seen extinguished. Iwas too late.

With tear-dimmed eyes I turned away thatI might not see the awful sight beneath.

A moment later I had struck the bondsfrom Dejah Thoris, and as her dear arms wentabout my neck and her perfect lips pressed tomine I forgot the horrors that I had witnessedand the suffering that I had endured in therapture of my reward.

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The flier upon whose deck Dejah Thoris andI found ourselves after twelve long years ofseparation proved entirely useless. Her buoy-ancy tanks leaked badly. Her engine wouldnot start. We were helpless there in mid airabove the arctic ice.

The craft had drifted across the chasmwhich held the corpses of Matai Shang,Thurid, and Phaidor, and now hung abovea low hill. Opening the buoyancy escapevalves I permitted her to come slowly to theground, and as she touched, Dejah Thoris andI stepped from her deck and, hand in hand,turned back across the frozen waste towardthe city of Kadabra.

Through the tunnel that had led me in pur-suit of them we passed, walking slowly, for wehad much to say to each other.

She told me of that last terrible momentmonths before when the door of her prison cellwithin the Temple of the Sun was slowly clos-ing between us. Of how Phaidor had sprungupon her with uplifted dagger, and of Thuvia’sshriek as she had realized the foul intention ofthe thern goddess.

225


It had been that cry that had rung in myears all the long, weary months that I hadbeen left in cruel doubt as to my princess’ fate;for I had not known that Thuvia had wrestedthe blade from the daughter of Matai Shangbefore it had touched either Dejah Thoris orherself.

She told me, too, of the awful eternity ofher imprisonment. Of the cruel hatred ofPhaidor, and the tender love of Thuvia, and ofhow even when despair was the darkest thosetwo red girls had clung to the same hope andbelief—that John Carter would find a way torelease them.

Presently we came to the chamber ofSolan. I had been proceeding without thoughtof caution, for I was sure that the city and thepalace were both in the hands of my friendsby this time.

And so it was that I bolted into the cham-ber full into the midst of a dozen nobles ofthe court of Salensus Oll. They were pass-ing through on their way to the outside worldalong the corridors we had just traversed.

At sight of us they halted in their tracks,and then an ugly smile overspread the fea-tures of their leader.

“The author of all our misfortunes!” hecried, pointing at me. “We shall have the sat-isfaction of a partial vengeance at least whenwe leave behind us here the dead and muti-lated corpses of the Prince and Princess of He-lium.

“When they find them,” he went on, jerkinghis thumb upward toward the palace above,

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“they will realize that the vengeance of theyellow man costs his enemies dear. Prepare todie, John Carter, but that your end may be themore bitter, know that I may change my in-tention as to meting a merciful death to yourprincess—possibly she shall be preserved as aplaything for my nobles.”

I stood close to the instrument-coveredwall—Dejah Thoris at my side. She lookedup at me wonderingly as the warriors ad-vanced upon us with drawn swords, for minestill hung within its scabbard at my side, andthere was a smile upon my lips.

The yellow nobles, too, looked in surprise,and then as I made no move to draw they hes-itated, fearing a ruse; but their leader urgedthem on. When they had come almost withinsword’s reach of me I raised my hand and laidit upon the polished surface of a great lever,and then, still smiling grimly, I looked my en-emies full in the face.

As one they came to a sudden stop, castingaffrighted glances at me and at one another.

“Stop!” shrieked their leader. “You dreamnot what you do!”

“Right you are,” I replied. “John Carterdoes not dream. He knows—knows thatshould one of you take another step towardDejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, I pull thislever wide, and she and I shall die together;but we shall not die alone.”

The nobles shrank back, whispering to-gether for a few moments. At last their leaderturned to me.

“Go your way, John Carter,” he said, “and


we shall go ours.”“Prisoners do not go their own way,” I an-

swered, “and you are prisoners—prisoners ofthe Prince of Helium.”

Before they could make answer a doorupon the opposite side of the apartmentopened and a score of yellow men poured intothe apartment. For an instant the nobleslooked relieved, and then as their eyes fellupon the leader of the new party their facesfell, for he was Talu, rebel Prince of Mar-entina, and they knew that they could look forneither aid nor mercy at his hands.

“Well done, John Carter,” he cried. “Youturn their own mighty power against them.Fortunate for Okar is it that you werehere to prevent their escape, for these bethe greatest villains north of the ice-barrier,and this one”—pointing to the leader of theparty—“would have made himself Jeddak ofJeddaks in the place of the dead Salensus Oll.Then indeed would we have had a more vil-lainous ruler than the hated tyrant who fellbefore your sword.”

The Okarian nobles now submitted to ar-rest, since nothing but death faced themshould they resist, and, escorted by the war-riors of Talu, we made our way to the great au-dience chamber that had been Salensus Oll’s.Here was a vast concourse of warriors.

Red men from Helium and Ptarth, yellowmen of the north, rubbing elbows with theblacks of the First Born who had come undermy friend Xodar to help in the search for meand my princess. There were savage, green

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warriors from the dead sea bottoms of thesouth, and a handful of white-skinned thernswho had renounced their religion and swornallegiance to Xodar.

There was Tardos Mors and Mors Kajak,and tall and mighty in his gorgeous warriortrappings, Carthoris, my son. These threefell upon Dejah Thoris as we entered theapartment, and though the lives and train-ing of royal Martians tend not toward vulgardemonstration, I thought that they would suf-focate her with their embraces.

And there were Tars Tarkas, Jeddak ofThark, and Kantos Kan, my old-time friends,and leaping and tearing at my harness inthe exuberance of his great love was dear oldWoola—frantic mad with happiness.

Long and loud was the cheering that burstforth at sight of us; deafening was the din ofringing metal as the veteran warriors of everyMartian clime clashed their blades togetheron high in token of success and victory, but asI passed among the throng of saluting noblesand warriors, jeds and jeddaks, my heart stillwas heavy, for there were two faces missingthat I would have given much to have seenthere—Thuvan Dihn and Thuvia of Ptarthwere not to be found in the great chamber.

I made inquiries concerning them amongmen of every nation, and at last from oneof the yellow prisoners of war I learned thatthey had been apprehended by an officer ofthe palace as they sought to reach the Pit ofPlenty while I lay imprisoned there.

I did not need to ask to know what had sent


them thither—the courageous jeddak and hisloyal daughter. My informer said that they laynow in one of the many buried dungeons of thepalace where they had been placed pending adecision as to their fate by the tyrant of thenorth.

A moment later searching parties werescouring the ancient pile in search of them,and my cup of happiness was full when I sawthem being escorted into the room by a cheer-ing guard of honor.

Thuvia’s first act was to rush to the side ofDejah Thoris, and I needed no better proof ofthe love these two bore for each other than thesincerity with which they embraced.

Looking down upon that crowded chamberstood the silent and empty throne of Okar.

Of all the strange scenes it must have wit-nessed since that long-dead age that had firstseen a Jeddak of Jeddaks take his seat uponit, none might compare with that upon whichit now looked down, and as I pondered thepast and future of that long-buried race ofblack-bearded yellow men I thought that Isaw a brighter and more useful existence forthem among the great family of friendly na-tions that now stretched from the south polealmost to their very doors.

Twenty-two years before I had been cast,naked and a stranger, into this strange andsavage world. The hand of every race and na-tion was raised in continual strife and war-ring against the men of every other land andcolor. Today, by the might of my sword andthe loyalty of the friends my sword had made

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for me, black man and white, red man andgreen rubbed shoulders in peace and good-fellowship. All the nations of Barsoom werenot yet as one, but a great stride forward to-ward that goal had been taken, and now if Icould but cement the fierce yellow race intothis solidarity of nations I should feel that Ihad rounded out a great lifework, and repaidto Mars at least a portion of the immense debtof gratitude I owed her for having given memy Dejah Thoris.

And as I thought, I saw but one way, anda single man who could insure the successof my hopes. As is ever the way with me, Iacted then as I always act—without delibera-tion and without consultation.

Those who do not like my plans and myways of promoting them have always theirswords at their sides wherewith to back uptheir disapproval; but now there seemed to beno dissenting voice, as, grasping Talu by thearm, I sprang to the throne that had once beenSalensus Oll’s.

“Warriors of Barsoom,” I cried, “Kadabrahas fallen, and with her the hateful tyrant ofthe north; but the integrity of Okar must bepreserved. The red men are ruled by red jed-daks, the green warriors of the ancient seasacknowledge none but a green ruler, the FirstBorn of the south pole take their law fromblack Xodar; nor would it be to the interestsof either yellow or red man were a red jeddakto sit upon the throne of Okar.

“There be but one warrior best fitted forthe ancient and mighty title of Jeddak of Jed-


daks of the North. Men of Okar, raise yourswords to your new ruler—Talu, the rebelprince of Marentina!”

And then a great cry of rejoicing roseamong the free men of Marentina and theKadabran prisoners, for all had thought thatthe red men would retain that which they hadtaken by force of arms, for such had been theway upon Barsoom, and that they should beruled henceforth by an alien Jeddak.

The victorious warriors who had followedCarthoris joined in the mad demonstration,and amidst the wild confusion and the tumultand the cheering, Dejah Thoris and I passedout into the gorgeous garden of the jeddaksthat graces the inner courtyard of the palaceof Kadabra.

At our heels walked Woola, and upon acarved seat of wondrous beauty beneath abower of purple blooms we saw two who hadpreceded us—Thuvia of Ptarth and Carthorisof Helium.

The handsome head of the handsomeyouth was bent low above the beautiful face ofhis companion. I looked at Dejah Thoris, smil-ing, and as I drew her close to me I whispered:“Why not?”

Indeed, why not? What matter ages in thisworld of perpetual youth?

We remained at Kadabra, the guests ofTalu, until after his formal induction into of-fice, and then, upon the great fleet which I hadbeen so fortunate to preserve from destruc-tion, we sailed south across the ice-barrier;but not before we had witnessed the total de-

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molition of the grim Guardian of the Northunder orders of the new Jeddak of Jeddaks.

“Henceforth,” he said, as the work wascompleted, “the fleets of the red men and theblack are free to come and go across the ice-barrier as over their own lands.

“The Carrion Caves shall be cleansed, thatthe green men may find an easy way to theland of the yellow, and the hunting of the sa-cred apt shall be the sport of my nobles un-til no single specimen of that hideous creatureroams the frozen north.”

We bade our yellow friends farewell withreal regret, as we set sail for Ptarth. Therewe remained, the guest of Thuvan Dihn, for amonth; and I could see that Carthoris wouldhave remained forever had he not been aPrince of Helium.

Above the mighty forests of Kaol we hov-ered until word from Kulan Tith brought usto his single landing-tower, where all day andhalf a night the vessels disembarked theircrews. At the city of Kaol we visited, cement-ing the new ties that had been formed be-tween Kaol and Helium, and then one long-to-be-remembered day we sighted the tall, thintowers of the twin cities of Helium.

The people had long been preparing forour coming. The sky was gorgeous with gailytrimmed fliers. Every roof within both citieswas spread with costly silks and tapestries.

Gold and jewels were scattered over roofand street and plaza, so that the two citiesseemed ablaze with the fires of the hearts ofthe magnificent stones and burnished metal


that reflected the brilliant sunlight, changingit into countless glorious hues.

At last, after twelve years, the royal familyof Helium was reunited in their own mightycity, surrounded by joy-mad millions beforethe palace gates. Women and children andmighty warriors wept in gratitude for the fatethat had restored their beloved Tardos Morsand the divine princess whom the whole na-tion idolized. Nor did any of us who had beenupon that expedition of indescribable dangerand glory lack for plaudits.

That night a messenger came to me as Isat with Dejah Thoris and Carthoris upon theroof of my city palace, where we had long sincecaused a lovely garden to be made that wethree might find seclusion and quiet happi-ness among ourselves, far from the pomp andceremony of court, to summon us to the Tem-ple of Reward—“where one is to be judged thisnight,” the summons concluded.

I racked my brain to try and determinewhat important case there might be pendingwhich could call the royal family from theirpalaces on the eve of their return to Heliumafter years of absence; but when the jeddaksummons no man delays.

As our flier touched the landing stage atthe temple’s top we saw countless other craftarriving and departing. In the streets below agreat multitude surged toward the great gatesof the temple.

Slowly there came to me the recollectionof the deferred doom that awaited me sincethat time I had been tried here in the Temple

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by Zat Arras for the sin of returning from theValley Dor and the Lost Sea of Korus.

Could it be possible that the strict sense ofjustice which dominates the men of Mars hadcaused them to overlook the great good thathad come out of my heresy? Could they ignorethe fact that to me, and me alone, was due therescue of Carthoris, of Dejah Thoris, of MorsKajak, of Tardos Mors?

I could not believe it, and yet for whatother purpose could I have been summoned tothe Temple of Reward immediately upon thereturn of Tardos Mors to his throne?

My first surprise as I entered the templeand approached the Throne of Righteousnesswas to note the men who sat there as judges.There was Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, whomwe had but just left within his own palace afew days since; there was Thuvan Dihn, Jed-dak of Ptarth—how came he to Helium assoon as we?

There was Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark,and Xodar, Jeddak of the First Born; therewas Talu, Jeddak of Jeddaks of the North,whom I could have sworn was still in his ice-bound hothouse city beyond the northern bar-rier, and among them sat Tardos Mors andMors Kajak, with enough lesser jeds and jed-daks to make up the thirty-one who must sitin judgment upon their fellow-man.

A right royal tribunal indeed, and such aone, I warrant, as never before sat togetherduring all the history of ancient Mars.

As I entered, silence fell upon the greatconcourse of people that packed the audito-


rium. Then Tardos Mors arose.“John Carter,” he said in his deep, martial

voice, “take your place upon the Pedestal ofTruth, for you are to be tried by a fair andimpartial tribunal of your fellow-men.”

With level eye and high-held head I did ashe bade, and as I glanced about that circle offaces that a moment before I could have sworncontained the best friends I had upon Bar-soom, I saw no single friendly glance—onlystern, uncompromising judges, there to dotheir duty.

A clerk rose and from a great book read along list of the more notable deeds that I hadthought to my credit, covering a long period oftwenty-two years since first I had stepped theocher sea bottom beside the incubator of theTharks. With the others he read of all that Ihad done within the circle of the Otz Moun-tains where the Holy Therns and the FirstBorn had held sway.

It is the way upon Barsoom to recite aman’s virtues with his sins when he is come totrial, and so I was not surprised that all thatwas to my credit should be read there to myjudges—who knew it all by heart—even downto the present moment. When the reading hadceased Tardos Mors arose.

“Most righteous judges,” he exclaimed,“you have heard recited all that is known ofJohn Carter, Prince of Helium—the good withthe bad. What is your judgment?”

Then Tars Tarkas came slowly to his feet,unfolding all his mighty, towering height untilhe loomed, a green-bronze statue, far above

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us all. He turned a baleful eye upon me—he,Tars Tarkas, with whom I had fought throughcountless battles; whom I loved as a brother.

I could have wept had I not been so madwith rage that I almost whipped my sword outand had at them all upon the spot.

“Judges,” he said, “there can be but oneverdict. No longer may John Carter be Princeof Helium”—he paused—“but instead let himbe Jeddak of Jeddaks, Warlord of Barsoom!”

As the thirty-one judges sprang to theirfeet with drawn and upraised swords in unan-imous concurrence in the verdict, the stormbroke throughout the length and breadth andheight of that mighty building until I thoughtthe roof would fall from the thunder of themad shouting.

Now, at last, I saw the grim humor of themethod they had adopted to do me this greathonor, but that there was any hoax in the re-ality of the title they had conferred upon mewas readily disproved by the sincerity of thecongratulations that were heaped upon me bythe judges first and then the nobles.

Presently fifty of the mightiest nobles ofthe greatest courts of Mars marched down thebroad Aisle of Hope bearing a splendid carupon their shoulders, and as the people sawwho sat within, the cheers that had rung outfor me paled into insignificance beside thosewhich thundered through the vast edifice now,for she whom the nobles carried was DejahThoris, beloved Princess of Helium.

Straight to the Throne of Righteousnessthey bore her, and there Tardos Mors assisted


her from the car, leading her forward to myside.

“Let a world’s most beautiful woman sharethe honor of her husband,” he said.

Before them all I drew my wife close to meand kissed her upon the lips.

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