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Gods of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs [Mars #2]
THE GODS OF MARS
Edgar Rice Burroughs
FOREWORD
TWELVE years had passed since I had laid the body of my
great-uncle, Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from
the sight of men in that strange mausoleum in the old
cemetery at Richmond.
Often had I pondered on the odd instructions he had left me
governing the construction of his mighty tomb, and especially
those parts which directed that he be laid in an OPEN casket
and that the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts
of the vault's huge door be accessible ONLY FROM THE INSIDE.
Twelve years had passed since I had read the remarkable
manuscript of this remarkable man; this man who remembered
no childhood and who could not even offer a vague guess as
to his age; who was always young and yet who had dandled my
grandfather's great-grandfather upon his knee; this man who
had spent ten years upon the planet Mars; who had fought for
the green men of Barsoom and fought against them; who had
fought for and against the red men and who had won the ever
beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, for his wife, and
for nearly ten years had been a prince of the house of Tardos
Mors, Jeddak of Helium.
Twelve years had passed since his body had been found upon
the bluff before his cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-
times during these long years I had wondered if John Carter
were really dead, or if he again roamed the dead sea bottoms
of that dying planet; if he had returned to Barsoom to find that
he had opened the frowning portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in
time to save the countless millions who were dying of asphyxiation
on that far-gone day that had seen him hurtled ruthlessly through
forty-eight million miles of space back to Earth once more.
I had wondered if he had found his black-haired Princess and the
slender son he had dreamed was with her in the royal gardens of
Tardos Mors, awaiting his return.
Or, had he found that he had been too late, and thus gone back to a
living death upon a dead world? Or was he really dead after all,
never to return either to his mother Earth or his beloved Mars?
Thus was I lost in useless speculation one sultry August
evening when old Ben, my body servant, handed me a telegram.
Tearing it open I read:
'Meet me to-morrow hotel Raleigh Richmond.
'JOHN CARTER'
Early the next morning I took the first train for Richmond
and within two hours was being ushered into the room occupied
by John Carter.
As I entered he rose to greet me, his old-time cordial
smile of welcome lighting his handsome face. Apparently he
had not aged a minute, but was still the straight, clean-limbed
fighting-man of thirty. His keen grey eyes were undimmed, and
the only lines upon his face were the lines of iron character and
determination that always had been there since first I remembered him,
nearly thirty-five years before.
'Well, nephew,' he greeted me, 'do you feel as though you
were seeing a ghost, or suffering from the effects of too many
of Uncle Ben's juleps?'
'Juleps, I reckon,' I replied, 'for I certainly feel mighty good;
but maybe it's just the sight of you again that affects me. You
have been back to Mars? Tell me. And Dejah Thoris? You
found her well and awaiting you?'
'Yes, I have been to Barsoom again, and--but it's a long
story, too long to tell in the limited time I have before I must
return. I have learned the secret, nephew, and I may traverse
the trackless void at my will, coming and going between the
countless planets as I list; but my heart is always in Barsoom,
and while it is there in the keeping of my Martian Princess, I
doubt that I shall ever again leave the dying world that is my life.
'I have come now because my affection for you prompted me
to see you once more before you pass over for ever into that
other life that I shall never know, and which though I have
died thrice and shall die again to-night, as you know death, I
am as unable to fathom as are you.
'Even the wise and mysterious therns of Barsoom, that
ancient cult which for countless ages has been credited with
holding the secret of life and death in their impregnable
fastnesses upon the hither slopes of the Mountains of Otz, are as
ignorant as we. I have proved it, though I near lost my life in
the doing of it; but you shall read it all in the notes I have been
making during the last three months that I have been back upon Earth.'
He patted a swelling portfolio that lay on the table at his elbow.
'I know that you are interested and that you believe, and I
know that the world, too, is interested, though they will not
believe for many years; yes, for many ages, since they cannot
understand. Earth men have not yet progressed to a point where
they can comprehend the things that I have written in those notes.
'Give them what you wish of it, what you think will not
harm them, but do not feel aggrieved if they laugh at you.'
That night I walked down to the cemetery with him. At the
door of his vault he turned and pressed my hand.
'Good-bye, nephew,' he said. 'I may never see you again,
for I doubt that I can ever bring myself to leave my wife and
boy while they live, and the span of life upon Barsoom is often
more than a thousand years.'
He entered the vault. The great door swung slowly to. The
ponderous bolts grated into place. The lock clicked. I have
never seen Captain John Carter, of Virginia, since.
But here is the story of his return to Mars on that other occasion,
as I have gleaned it from the great mass of notes which he left
for me upon the table of his room in the hotel at Richmond.
There is much which I have left out; much which I have not
dared to tell; but you will find the story of his second search
for Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, even more remarkable
than was his first manuscript which I gave to an unbelieving
world a short time since and through which we followed the
fighting Virginian across dead sea bottoms under the moons of Mars.
E. R. B.
CONTENTS
Contents
I. The Plant Men
II. A Forest Battle
III. The Chamber of Mystery
IV. Thuvia
V. Corridors of Peril
VI. The Black Pirates of Barsoom
VII. A Fair Goddess
VIII. The Depths of Omean
IX. Issus, Goddess of Life Eternal
X. The Prison Isle of Shador
XI. When Hell Broke Loose
XII. Doomed to Die
XIII. A Break for Liberty
XIV. The Eyes in the Dark
XV. Flight and Pursuit
XVI. Under Arrest
XVII. The Death Sentence
XVIII. Sola's Story
XIX. Black Despair
XX. The Air Battle
XXI. Through Flood and Flame
XXII. Victory and Defeat
THE GODS OF MARS
CHAPTER I
THE PLANT MEN
As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that clear
cold night in the early part of March, 1886, the noble Hudson
flowing like the grey and silent spectre of a dead river
below me, I felt again the strange, compelling influence of
the mighty god of war, my beloved Mars, which for ten long
and lonesome years I had implored with outstretched arms
to carry me back to my lost love.
Not since that other March night in 1866, when I had
stood without that Arizona cave in which my still and lifeless
body lay wrapped in the similitude of earthly death had I felt
the irresistible attraction of the god of my profession.
With arms outstretched toward the red eye of the great
star I stood praying for a return of that strange power which
twice had drawn me through the immensity of space, praying
as I had prayed on a thousand nights before during the long
ten years that I had waited and hoped.
Suddenly a qualm of nausea swept over me, my senses
swam, my knees gave beneath me and I pitched headlong
to the ground upon the very verge of the dizzy bluff.
Instantly my brain cleared and there swept back across
the threshold of my memory the vivid picture of the horrors
of that ghostly Arizona cave; again, as on that far-gone night,
my muscles refused to respond to my will and again, as
though even here upon the banks of the placid Hudson, I
could hear the awful moans and rustling of the fearsome
thing which had lurked and threatened me from the dark
recesses of the cave, I made the same mighty and superhuman
effort to break the bonds of the strange anaesthesia which
held me, and again came the sharp click as of the sudden
parting of a taut wire, and I stood naked and free beside
the staring, lifeless thing that had so recently pulsed with
the warm, red life-blood of John Carter.
With scarcely a parting glance I turned my eyes again toward
Mars, lifted my hands toward his lurid rays, and waited.
Nor did I have long to wait; for scarce had I turned ere I
shot with the rapidity of thought into the awful void before
me. There was the same instant of unthinkable cold and utter
darkness that I had experienced twenty years before, and
then I opened my eyes in another world, beneath the burning
rays of a hot sun, which beat through a tiny opening in the
dome of the mighty forest in which I lay.
The scene that met my eyes was so un-Martian that my
heart sprang to my throat as the sudden fear swept through
me that I had been aimlessly tossed upon some strange planet
by a cruel fate.
Why not? What guide had I through the trackless waste of
interplanetary space? What assurance that I might not as
well be hurtled to some far-distant star of another
solar system, as to Mars?
I lay upon a close-cropped sward of red grasslike vegetation,
and about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees,
covered with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant,
voiceless birds. I call them birds since they were winged, but
mortal eye ne'er rested on such odd, unearthly shapes.
The vegetation was similar to that which covers the lawns
of the red Martians of the great waterways, but the trees
and birds were unlike anything that I had ever seen upon
Mars, and then through the further trees I could see that
most un-Martian of all sights--an open sea, its blue waters
shimmering beneath the brazen sun.
As I rose to investigate further I experienced the same
ridiculous catastrophe that had met my first attempt to walk
under Martian conditions. The lesser attraction of this smaller
planet and the reduced air pressure of its greatly rarefied
atmosphere, afforded so little resistance to my earthly muscles
that the ordinary exertion of the mere act of rising sent
me several feet into the air and precipitated me upon my
face in the soft and brilliant grass of this strange world.
This experience, however, gave me some slightly increased
assurance that, after all, I might indeed be in some, to me,
unknown corner of Mars, and this was very possible since
during my ten years' residence upon the planet I had
explored but a comparatively tiny area of its vast expanse.
I arose again, laughing at my forgetfulness, and soon had
mastered once more the art of attuning my earthly sinews
to these changed conditions.
As I walked slowly down the imperceptible slope toward
the sea I could not help but note the park-like appearance of
the sward and trees. The grass was as close-cropped and
carpet-like as some old English lawn and the trees themselves
showed evidence of careful pruning to a uniform height of
about fifteen feet from the ground, so that as one turned his
glance in any direction the forest had the appearance at a
little distance of a vast, high-ceiled chamber.
All these evidences of careful and systematic cultivation
convinced me that I had been fortunate enough to make my
entry into Mars on this second occasion through the domain
of a civilized people and that when I should find them I
would be accorded the courtesy and protection that my rank
as a Prince of the house of Tardos Mors entitled me to.
The trees of the forest attracted my deep admiration as I
proceeded toward the sea. Their great stems, some of them
fully a hundred feet in diameter, attested their prodigious
height, which I could only guess at, since at no point could
I penetrate their dense foliage above me to more than sixty
or eighty feet.
As far aloft as I could see the stems and branches and
twigs were as smooth and as highly polished as the newest of
American-made pianos. The wood of some of the trees was
as black as ebony, while their nearest neighbours might
perhaps gleam in the subdued light of the forest as clear
and white as the finest china, or, again, they were azure,
scarlet, yellow, or deepest purple.
And in the same way was the foliage as gay and variegated
as the stems, while the blooms that clustered thick upon
them may not be described in any earthly tongue, and indeed
might challenge the language of the gods.
As I neared the confines of the forest I beheld before me
and between the grove and the open sea, a broad expanse
of meadow land, and as I was about to emerge from the
shadows of the trees a sight met my eyes that banished
all romantic and poetic reflection upon the beauties of
the strange landscape.
To my left the sea extended as far as the eye could reach,
before me only a vague, dim line indicated its further shore,
while at my right a mighty river, broad, placid, and majestic,
flowed between scarlet banks to empty into the quiet sea before me.
At a little distance up the river rose mighty perpendicular bluffs,
from the very base of which the great river seemed to rise.
But it was not these inspiring and magnificent evidences of
Nature's grandeur that took my immediate attention from the
beauties of the forest. It was the sight of a score of figures
moving slowly about the meadow near the bank of the mighty river.
Odd, grotesque shapes they were; unlike anything that I had
ever seen upon Mars, and yet, at a distance, most manlike
in appearance. The larger specimens appeared to be about
ten or twelve feet in height when they stood erect, and
to be proportioned as to torso and lower extremities
precisely as is earthly man.
Their arms, however, were very short, and from where I stood
seemed as though fashioned much after the manner of an
elephant's trunk, in that they moved in sinuous and snakelike
undulations, as though entirely without bony structure, or if
there were bones it seemed that they must be vertebral in nature.
As I watched them from behind the stem of a huge tree,
one of the creatures moved slowly in my direction, engaged
in the occupation that seemed to be the principal business of
each of them, and which consisted in running their oddly
shaped hands over the surface of the sward, for what purpose
I could not determine.
As he approached quite close to me I obtained an excellent
view of him, and though I was later to become better
acquainted with his kind, I may say that that single cursory
examination of this awful travesty on Nature would have
proved quite sufficient to my desires had I been a free agent.
The fastest flier of the Heliumetic Navy could not quickly
enough have carried me far from this hideous creature.
Its hairless body was a strange and ghoulish blue, except
for a broad band of white which encircled its protruding,
single eye: an eye that was all dead white--pupil, iris,
and ball.
Its nose was a ragged, inflamed, circular hole in the centre
of its blank face; a hole that resembled more closely nothing
that I could think of other than a fresh bullet wound which
has not yet commenced to bleed.
Below this repulsive orifice the face was quite blank to
the chin, for the thing had no mouth that I could discover.
The head, with the exception of the face, was covered by a tangled
mass of jet-black hair some eight or ten inches in length. Each
hair was about the bigness of a large angleworm, and as the thing
moved the muscles of its scalp this awful head-covering seemed
to writhe and wriggle and crawl about the fearsome face as though
indeed each separate hair was endowed with independent life.
The body and the legs were as symmetrically human as Nature
could have fashioned them, and the feet, too, were human
in shape, but of monstrous proportions. From heel to toe
they were fully three feet long, and very flat and very broad.
As it came quite close to me I discovered that its strange
movements, running its odd hands over the surface of the
turf, were the result of its peculiar method of feeding, which
consists in cropping off the tender vegetation with its
razorlike talons and sucking it up from its two mouths, which
lie one in the palm of each hand, through its arm-like throats.
In addition to the features which I have already described,
the beast was equipped with a massive tail about six feet in
length, quite round where it joined the body, but tapering to
a flat, thin blade toward the end, which trailed at right
angles to the ground.
By far the most remarkable feature of this most remarkable
creature, however, were the two tiny replicas of it, each
about six inches in length, which dangled, one on either side,
from its armpits. They were suspended by a small stem which
seemed to grow from the exact tops of their heads to where
it connected them with the body of the adult.
Whether they were the young, or merely portions of a
composite creature, I did not know.
As I had been scrutinizing this weird monstrosity the
balance of the herd had fed quite close to me and I now saw
that while many had the smaller specimens dangling from
them, not all were thus equipped, and I further noted that
the little ones varied in size from what appeared to be but
tiny unopened buds an inch in diameter through various
stages of development to the full-fledged and perfectly
formed creature of ten to twelve inches in length.
Feeding with the herd were many of the little fellows not
much larger than those which remained attached to their
parents, and from the young of that size the herd graded up
to the immense adults.
Fearsome-looking as they were, I did not know whether to
fear them or not, for they did not seem to be particularly
well equipped for fighting, and I was on the point of stepping
from my hiding-place and revealing myself to them to
note the effect upon them of the sight of a man when my
rash resolve was, fortunately for me, nipped in the bud by
a strange shrieking wail, which seemed to come from the
direction of the bluffs at my right.
Naked and unarmed, as I was, my end would have been
both speedy and horrible at the hands of these cruel creatures
had I had time to put my resolve into execution, but at the
moment of the shriek each member of the herd turned in the
direction from which the sound seemed to come, and at
the same instant every particular snake-like hair upon their
heads rose stiffly perpendicular as if each had been a sentient
organism looking or listening for the source or meaning of the
wail. And indeed the latter proved to be the truth, for this
strange growth upon the craniums of the plant men of Barsoom
represents the thousand ears of these hideous creatures,
the last remnant of the strange race which sprang from the
original Tree of Life.
Instantly every eye turned toward one member of the
herd, a large fellow who evidently was the leader. A strange
purring sound issued from the mouth in the palm of one of
his hands, and at the same time he started rapidly toward the
bluff, followed by the entire herd.
Their speed and method of locomotion were both remarkable,
springing as they did in great leaps of twenty or thirty
feet, much after the manner of a kangaroo.
They were rapidly disappearing when it occurred to me
to follow them, and so, hurling caution to the winds, I sprang
across the meadow in their wake with leaps and bounds even
more prodigious than their own, for the muscles of an
athletic Earth man produce remarkable results when pitted
against the lesser gravity and air pressure of Mars.
Their way led directly towards the apparent source of the
river at the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point I
found the meadow dotted with huge boulders that the ravages
of time had evidently dislodged from the towering crags above.
For this reason I came quite close to the cause of the
disturbance before the scene broke upon my horrified gaze.
As I topped a great boulder I saw the herd of plant men
surrounding a little group of perhaps five or six green men
and women of Barsoom.
That I was indeed upon Mars I now had no doubt, for
here were members of the wild hordes that people the dead
sea bottoms and deserted cities of that dying planet.
Here were the great males towering in all the majesty of
their imposing height; here were the gleaming white tusks
protruding from their massive lower jaws to a point near the
centre of their foreheads, the laterally placed, protruding
eyes with which they could look forward or backward, or to
either side without turning their heads, here the strange
antennae-like ears rising from the tops of their foreheads;
and the additional pair of arms extending from midway between
the shoulders and the hips.
Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornaments
which denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I would
have known them on the instant for what they were,
for where else in all the universe is their like duplicated?
There were two men and four females in the party and
their ornaments denoted them as members of different
hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, since
the various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally at
deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single
historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered
a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several
hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue
Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of
Than Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordes
associated in other than mortal combat.
But now they stood back to back, facing, in wide-eyed amazement,
the very evidently hostile demonstrations of a common enemy.
Both men and women were armed with long-swords and
daggers, but no firearms were in evidence, else it had been
short shrift for the gruesome plant men of Barsoom.
Presently the leader of the plant men charged the little
party, and his method of attack was as remarkable as it was
effective, and by its very strangeness was the more potent,
since in the science of the green warriors there was no
defence for this singular manner of attack, the like of which
it soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar with as
they were with the monstrosities which confronted them.
The plant man charged to within a dozen feet of the party
and then, with a bound, rose as though to pass directly above
their heads. His powerful tail was raised high to one side, and
as he passed close above them he brought it down in one terrific
sweep that crushed a green warrior's skull as though it had been
an eggshell.
The balance of the frightful herd was now circling rapidly
and with bewildering speed about the little knot of victims.
Their prodigious bounds and the shrill, screeching purr of
their uncanny mouths were well calculated to confuse and
terrorize their prey, so that as two of them leaped
simultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep of
those awful tails met with no resistance and two more
green Martians went down to an ignoble death.
There were now but one warrior and two females left,
and it seemed that it could be but a matter of seconds
ere these, also, lay dead upon the scarlet sward.
But as two more of the plant men charged, the warrior,
who was now prepared by the experiences of the past few
minutes, swung his mighty long-sword aloft and met the
hurtling bulk with a clean cut that clove one of the
plant men from chin to groin.
The other, however, dealt a single blow with his cruel tail
that laid both of the females crushed corpses upon the ground.
As the green warrior saw the last of his companions go
down and at the same time perceived that the entire herd
was charging him in a body, he rushed boldly to meet them,
swinging his long-sword in the terrific manner that I had so
often seen the men of his kind wield it in their ferocious and
almost continual warfare among their own race.
Cutting and hewing to right and left, he laid an open path
straight through the advancing plant men, and then commenced
a mad race for the forest, in the shelter of which
he evidently hoped that he might find a haven of refuge.
He had turned for that portion of the forest which abutted
on the cliffs, and thus the mad race was taking the entire
party farther and farther from the boulder where I lay concealed.
As I had watched the noble fight which the great warrior
had put up against such enormous odds my heart had swelled
in admiration for him, and acting as I am wont to do, more
upon impulse than after mature deliberation, I instantly
sprang from my sheltering rock and bounded quickly toward
the bodies of the dead green Martians, a well-defined plan
of action already formed.
Half a dozen great leaps brought me to the spot, and another
instant saw me again in my stride in quick pursuit of the
hideous monsters that were rapidly gaining on the fleeing
warrior, but this time I grasped a mighty long-sword in my
hand and in my heart was the old blood lust of the fighting
man, and a red mist swam before my eyes and I felt my lips
respond to my heart in the old smile that has ever marked
me in the midst of the joy of battle.
Swift as I was I was none too soon, for the green warrior
had been overtaken ere he had made half the distance to the
forest, and now he stood with his back to a boulder, while
the herd, temporarily balked, hissed and screeched about him.
With their single eyes in the centre of their heads and every
eye turned upon their prey, they did not note my soundless
approach, so that I was upon them with my great long-sword
and four of them lay dead ere they knew that I was among them.
For an instant they recoiled before my terrific onslaught,
and in that instant the green warrior rose to the occasion
and, springing to my side, laid to the right and left of him as
I had never seen but one other warrior do, with great circling
strokes that formed a figure eight about him and that never
stopped until none stood living to oppose him, his keen blade
passing through flesh and bone and metal as though each
had been alike thin air.
As we bent to the slaughter, far above us rose that shrill,
weird cry which I had heard once before, and which had
called the herd to the attack upon their victims. Again and
again it rose, but we were too much engaged with the fierce
and powerful creatures about us to attempt to search out
even with our eyes the author of the horrid notes.
Great tails lashed in frenzied anger about us, razor-like
talons cut our limbs and bodies, and a green and sticky
syrup, such as oozes from a crushed caterpillar, smeared us
from head to foot, for every cut and thrust of our longswords
brought spurts of this stuff upon us from the severed arteries
of the plant men, through which it courses in its sluggish
viscidity in lieu of blood.
Once I felt the great weight of one of the monsters upon
my back and as keen talons sank into my flesh I experienced
the frightful sensation of moist lips sucking the lifeblood from
the wounds to which the claws still clung.
I was very much engaged with a ferocious fellow who
was endeavouring to reach my throat from in front, while
two more, one on either side, were lashing viciously at me
with their tails.
The green warrior was much put to it to hold his own,
and I felt that the unequal struggle could last but a
moment longer when the huge fellow discovered my plight,
and tearing himself from those that surrounded him, he raked
the assailant from my back with a single sweep of his blade,
and thus relieved I had little difficulty with the others.
Once together, we stood almost back to back against the
great boulder, and thus the creatures were prevented from
soaring above us to deliver their deadly blows, and as we
were easily their match while they remained upon the
ground, we were making great headway in dispatching what
remained of them when our attention was again attracted by
the shrill wail of the caller above our heads.
This time I glanced up, and far above us upon a little
natural balcony on the face of the cliff stood a strange figure
of a man shrieking out his shrill signal, the while he waved
one hand in the direction of the river's mouth as though
beckoning to some one there, and with the other pointed and
gesticulated toward us.
A glance in the direction toward which he was looking
was sufficient to apprise me of his aims and at the same time
to fill me with the dread of dire apprehension, for, streaming
in from all directions across the meadow, from out of the
forest, and from the far distance of the flat land across the
river, I could see converging upon us a hundred different
lines of wildly leaping creatures such as we were now
engaged with, and with them some strange new monsters which
ran with great swiftness, now erect and now upon all fours.
"It will be a great death," I said to my companion. "Look!"
As he shot a quick glance in the direction I indicated he smiled.
"We may at least die fighting and as great warriors should,
John Carter," he replied.
We had just finished the last of our immediate antagonists
as he spoke, and I turned in surprised wonderment at the
sound of my name.
And there before my astonished eyes I beheld the greatest
of the green men of Barsoom; their shrewdest statesman,
their mightiest general, my great and good friend,
Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark.
CHAPTER II
A FOREST BATTLE
Tars Tarkas and I found no time for an exchange of experiences
as we stood there before the great boulder surrounded by the
corpses of our grotesque assailants, for from all directions
down the broad valley was streaming a perfect torrent of
terrifying creatures in response to the weird call of the
strange figure far above us.
"Come," cried Tars Tarkas, "we must make for the cliffs.
There lies our only hope of even temporary escape; there
we may find a cave or a narrow ledge which two may defend
for ever against this motley, unarmed horde."
Together we raced across the scarlet sward, I timing my
speed that I might not outdistance my slower companion. We
had, perhaps, three hundred yards to cover between our
boulder and the cliffs, and then to search out a suitable
shelter for our stand against the terrifying things that were
pursuing us.
They were rapidly overhauling us when Tars Tarkas cried
to me to hasten ahead and discover, if possible, the sanctuary
we sought. The suggestion was a good one, for thus many
valuable minutes might be saved to us, and, throwing
every ounce of my earthly muscles into the effort, I cleared
the remaining distance between myself and the cliffs in
great leaps and bounds that put me at their base in a moment.
The cliffs rose perpendicular directly from the almost level
sward of the valley. There was no accumulation of fallen debris,
forming a more or less rough ascent to them, as is the case with
nearly all other cliffs I have ever seen. The scattered
boulders that had fallen from above and lay upon or partly
buried in the turf, were the only indication that any
disintegration of the massive, towering pile of rocks ever
had taken place.
My first cursory inspection of the face of the cliffs filled
my heart with forebodings, since nowhere could I discern, except
where the weird herald stood still shrieking his shrill summons, the
faintest indication of even a bare foothold upon the lofty escarpment.
To my right the bottom of the cliff was lost in the dense foliage
of the forest, which terminated at its very foot, rearing its
gorgeous foliage fully a thousand feet against its stern and
forbidding neighbour.
To the left the cliff ran, apparently unbroken, across the
head of the broad valley, to be lost in the outlines of what
appeared to be a range of mighty mountains that skirted
and confined the valley in every direction.
Perhaps a thousand feet from me the river broke, as it
seemed, directly from the base of the cliffs, and as there
seemed not the remotest chance for escape in that direction
I turned my attention again toward the forest.
The cliffs towered above me a good five thousand feet.
The sun was not quite upon them and they loomed a dull
yellow in their own shade. Here and there they were broken
with streaks and patches of dusky red, green, and occasional
areas of white quartz.
Altogether they were very beautiful, but I fear that I did
not regard them with a particularly appreciative eye on this,
my first inspection of them.
Just then I was absorbed in them only as a medium of
escape, and so, as my gaze ran quickly, time and again,
over their vast expanse in search of some cranny or crevice,
I came suddenly to loathe them as the prisoner must loathe
the cruel and impregnable walls of his dungeon.
Tars Tarkas was approaching me rapidly, and still more
rapidly came the awful horde at his heels.
It seemed the forest now or nothing, and I was just on the
point of motioning Tars Tarkas to follow me in that direction
when the sun passed the cliff's zenith, and as the bright rays
touched the dull surface it burst out into a million scintillant
lights of burnished gold, of flaming red, of soft greens, and
gleaming whites--a more gorgeous and inspiring spectacle
human eye has never rested upon.
The face of the entire cliff was, as later inspection
conclusively proved, so shot with veins and patches of
solid gold as to quite present the appearance of a solid wall of
that precious metal except where it was broken by outcroppings of
ruby, emerald, and diamond boulders--a faint and alluring
indication of the vast and unguessable riches which lay
deeply buried behind the magnificent surface.
But what caught my most interested attention at the moment
that the sun's rays set the cliff's face a-shimmer, was the
several black spots which now appeared quite plainly in evidence
high across the gorgeous wall close to the forest's top,
and extending apparently below and behind the branches.
Almost immediately I recognised them for what they were,
the dark openings of caves entering the solid walls--possible
avenues of escape or temporary shelter, could we but reach them.
There was but a single way, and that led through the
mighty, towering trees upon our right. That I could scale
them I knew full well, but Tars Tarkas, with his mighty bulk
and enormous weight, would find it a task possibly quite
beyond his prowess or his skill, for Martians are at best but
poor climbers. Upon the entire surface of that ancient planet
I never before had seen a hill or mountain that exceeded four
thousand feet in height above the dead sea bottoms, and as
the ascent was usually gradual, nearly to their summits they
presented but few opportunities for the practice of climbing.
Nor would the Martians have embraced even such opportunities
as might present themselves, for they could always find a
circuitous route about the base of any eminence, and these
roads they preferred and followed in preference to the
shorter but more arduous ways.
However, there was nothing else to consider than an attempt
to scale the trees contiguous to the cliff in an effort to
reach the caves above.
The Thark grasped the possibilities and the difficulties of
the plan at once, but there was no alternative, and so we
set out rapidly for the trees nearest the cliff.
Our relentless pursuers were now close to us, so close that
it seemed that it would be an utter impossibility for the
Jeddak of Thark to reach the forest in advance of them, nor
was there any considerable will in the efforts that Tars Tarkas
made, for the green men of Barsoom do not relish flight, nor
ever before had I seen one fleeing from death in whatsoever
form it might have confronted him. But that Tars Tarkas was
the bravest of the brave he had proven thousands of times;
yes, tens of thousands in countless mortal combats with men
and beasts. And so I knew that there was another reason than
fear of death behind his flight, as he knew that a greater
power than pride or honour spurred me to escape these
fierce destroyers. In my case it was love--love of the divine
Dejah Thoris; and the cause of the Thark's great and sudden
love of life I could not fathom, for it is oftener that they seek
death than life--these strange, cruel, loveless, unhappy people.
At length, however, we reached the shadows of the forest, while
right behind us sprang the swiftest of our pursuers--a giant plant man
with claws outreaching to fasten his bloodsucking mouths upon us.
He was, I should say, a hundred yards in advance of his
closest companion, and so I called to Tars Tarkas to ascend a
great tree that brushed the cliff's face while I dispatched the
fellow, thus giving the less agile Thark an opportunity to
reach the higher branches before the entire horde should be
upon us and every vestige of escape cut off.
But I had reckoned without a just appreciation either of
the cunning of my immediate antagonist or the swiftness
with which his fellows were covering the distance which had
separated them from me.
As I raised my long-sword to deal the creature its death
thrust it halted in its charge and, as my sword cut harmlessly
through the empty air, the great tail of the thing swept with
the power of a grizzly's arm across the sward and carried
me bodily from my feet to the ground. In an instant the brute
was upon me, but ere it could fasten its hideous mouths into my
breast and throat I grasped a writhing tentacle in either hand.
The plant man was well muscled, heavy, and powerful
but my earthly sinews and greater agility, in conjunction
with the deathly strangle hold I had upon him, would have
given me, I think, an eventual victory had we had time to
discuss the merits of our relative prowess uninterrupted.
But as we strained and struggled about the tree into which
Tars Tarkas was clambering with infinite difficulty, I suddenly
caught a glimpse over the shoulder of my antagonist of the
great swarm of pursuers that now were fairly upon me.
Now, at last, I saw the nature of the other monsters who
had come with the plant men in response to the weird calling
of the man upon the cliff's face. They were that most dreaded
of Martian creatures--great white apes of Barsoom.
My former experiences upon Mars had familiarized me
thoroughly with them and their methods, and I may say that
of all the fearsome and terrible, weird and grotesque inhabitants
of that strange world, it is the white apes that come nearest
to familiarizing me with the sensation of fear.
I think that the cause of this feeling which these apes
engender within me is due to their remarkable resemblance
in form to our Earth men, which gives them a human appearance
that is most uncanny when coupled with their enormous size.
They stand fifteen feet in height and walk erect upon their
hind feet. Like the green Martians, they have an intermediary
set of arms midway between their upper and lower limbs.
Their eyes are very close set, but do not protrude as do those
of the green men of Mars; their ears are high set, but more
laterally located than are the green men's, while their snouts
and teeth are much like those of our African gorilla. Upon
their heads grows an enormous shock of bristly hair.
It was into the eyes of such as these and the terrible plant
men that I gazed above the shoulder of my foe, and then, in
a mighty wave of snarling, snapping, screaming, purring rage,
they swept over me--and of all the sounds that assailed my
ears as I went down beneath them, to me the most hideous
was the horrid purring of the plant men.
Instantly a score of cruel fangs and keen talons were sunk
into my flesh; cold, sucking lips fastened themselves upon my
arteries. I struggled to free myself, and even though weighed
down by these immense bodies, I succeeded in struggling to
my feet, where, still grasping my long-sword, and shortening my
grip upon it until I could use it as a dagger, I wrought such
havoc among them that at one time I stood for an instant free.
What it has taken minutes to write occurred in but a few
seconds, but during that time Tars Tarkas had seen my plight
and had dropped from the lower branches, which he had
reached with such infinite labour, and as I flung the last
of my immediate antagonists from me the great Thark leaped
to my side, and again we fought, back to back, as we
had done a hundred times before.
Time and again the ferocious apes sprang in to close with
us, and time and again we beat them back with our swords.
The great tails of the plant men lashed with tremendous
power about us as they charged from various directions or
sprang with the agility of greyhounds above our heads; but
every attack met a gleaming blade in sword hands that had
been reputed for twenty years the best that Mars ever had
known; for Tars Tarkas and John Carter were names that the
fighting men of the world of warriors loved best to speak.
But even the two best swords in a world of fighters can
avail not for ever against overwhelming numbers of fierce
and savage brutes that know not what defeat means until
cold steel teaches their hearts no longer to beat, and so, step
by step, we were forced back. At length we stood against the
giant tree that we had chosen for our ascent, and then, as
charge after charge hurled its weight upon us, we gave back
again and again, until we had been forced half-way around
the huge base of the colossal trunk.
Tars Tarkas was in the lead, and suddenly I heard a little
cry of exultation from him.
"Here is shelter for one at least, John Carter," he said,
and, glancing down, I saw an opening in the base of the tree
about three feet in diameter.
"In with you, Tars Tarkas," I cried, but he would not go;
saying that his bulk was too great for the little aperture,
while I might slip in easily.
"We shall both die if we remain without, John Carter; here
is a slight chance for one of us. Take it and you may live
to avenge me, it is useless for me to attempt to worm my
way into so small an opening with this horde of demons
besetting us on all sides."
"Then we shall die together, Tars Tarkas," I replied, "for I
shall not go first. Let me defend the opening while you get
in, then my smaller stature will permit me to slip in with you
before they can prevent."
We still were fighting furiously as we talked in broken sentences,
punctured with vicious cuts and thrusts at our swarming enemy.
At length he yielded, for it seemed the only way in which
either of us might be saved from the ever-increasing numbers
of our assailants, who were still swarming upon us from all
directions across the broad valley.
"It was ever your way, John Carter, to think last of your
own life," he said; "but still more your way to command the
lives and actions of others, even to the greatest of Jeddaks
who rule upon Barsoom."
There was a grim smile upon his cruel, hard face, as he,
the greatest Jeddak of them all, turned to obey the dictates
of a creature of another world--of a man whose stature was
less than half his own.
"If you fail, John Carter," he said, "know that the cruel
and heartless Thark, to whom you taught the meaning of
friendship, will come out to die beside you."
"As you will, my friend," I replied; "but quickly now,
head first, while I cover your retreat."
He hesitated a little at that word, for never before in his
whole life of continual strife had he turned his back upon
aught than a dead or defeated enemy.
"Haste, Tars Tarkas," I urged, "or we shall both go down
to profitless defeat; I cannot hold them for ever alone."
As he dropped to the ground to force his way into the
tree, the whole howling pack of hideous devils hurled themselves
upon me. To right and left flew my shimmering blade,
now green with the sticky juice of a plant man, now red
with the crimson blood of a great white ape; but always
flying from one opponent to another, hesitating but the barest
fraction of a second to drink the lifeblood in the centre of
some savage heart.
And thus I fought as I never had fought before, against such
frightful odds that I cannot realize even now that human
muscles could have withstood that awful onslaught, that
terrific weight of hurtling tons of ferocious, battling flesh.
With the fear that we would escape them, the creatures
redoubled their efforts to pull me down, and though the ground
about me was piled high with their dead and dying comrades,
they succeeded at last in overwhelming me, and I went down
beneath them for the second time that day, and once again
felt those awful sucking lips against my flesh.
But scarce had I fallen ere I felt powerful hands grip my ankles,
and in another second I was being drawn within the shelter of
the tree's interior. For a moment it was a tug of war between
Tars Tarkas and a great plant man, who clung tenaciously to my breast,
but presently I got the point of my long-sword beneath him and with
a mighty thrust pierced his vitals.
Torn and bleeding from many cruel wounds, I lay panting
upon the ground within the hollow of the tree, while Tars
Tarkas defended the opening from the furious mob without.
For an hour they howled about the tree, but after a few
attempts to reach us they confined their efforts to terrorizing
shrieks and screams, to horrid growling on the part of the
great white apes, and the fearsome and indescribable purring
by the plant men.
At length, all but a score, who had apparently been left to
prevent our escape, had left us, and our adventure seemed
destined to result in a siege, the only outcome of which could
be our death by starvation; for even should we be able to slip
out after dark, whither in this unknown and hostile valley
could we hope to turn our steps toward possible escape?
As the attacks of our enemies ceased and our eyes became
accustomed to the semi-darkness of the interior of our strange
retreat, I took the opportunity to explore our shelter.
The tree was hollow to an extent of about fifty feet in
diameter, and from its flat, hard floor I judged that it had
often been used to domicile others before our occupancy.
As I raised my eyes toward its roof to note the height I saw
far above me a faint glow of light.
There was an opening above. If we could but reach it
we might still hope to make the shelter of the cliff caves.
My eyes had now become quite used to the subdued light of
the interior, and as I pursued my investigation I presently
came upon a rough ladder at the far side of the cave.
Quickly I mounted it, only to find that it connected at the top
with the lower of a series of horizontal wooden bars that spanned
the now narrow and shaft-like interior of the tree's stem.
These bars were set one above another about three feet apart,
and formed a perfect ladder as far above me as I could see.
Dropping to the floor once more, I detailed my discovery
to Tars Tarkas, who suggested that I explore aloft as far as
I could go in safety while he guarded the entrance against a
possible attack.
As I hastened above to explore the strange shaft I found
that the ladder of horizontal bars mounted always as far
above me as my eyes could reach, and as I ascended, the
light from above grew brighter and brighter.
For fully five hundred feet I continued to climb, until at
length I reached the opening in the stem which admitted
the light. It was of about the same diameter as the entrance
at the foot of the tree, and opened directly upon a large flat
limb, the well worn surface of which testified to its long
continued use as an avenue for some creature to and from
this remarkable shaft.
I did not venture out upon the limb for fear that I might
be discovered and our retreat in this direction cut off;
but instead hurried to retrace my steps to Tars Tarkas.
I soon reached him and presently we were both ascending
the long ladder toward the opening above.
Tars Tarkas went in advance and as I reached the first
of the horizontal bars I drew the ladder up after me and,
handing it to him, he carried it a hundred feet further aloft,
where he wedged it safely between one of the bars and the
side of the shaft. In like manner I dislodged the lower bars
as I passed them, so that we soon had the interior of the
tree denuded of all possible means of ascent for a distance
of a hundred feet from the base; thus precluding possible
pursuit and attack from the rear.
As we were to learn later, this precaution saved us from dire
predicament, and was eventually the means of our salvation.
When we reached the opening at the top Tars Tarkas drew to one
side that I might pass out and investigate, as, owing to
my lesser weight and greater agility, I was better fitted for the
perilous threading of this dizzy, hanging pathway.
The limb upon which I found myself ascended at a slight
angle toward the cliff, and as I followed it I found that it
terminated a few feet above a narrow ledge which protruded
from the cliff's face at the entrance to a narrow cave.
As I approached the slightly more slender extremity of the branch
it bent beneath my weight until, as I balanced perilously
upon its outer tip, it swayed gently on a level with the
ledge at a distance of a couple of feet.
Five hundred feet below me lay the vivid scarlet carpet of
the valley; nearly five thousand feet above towered the mighty,
gleaming face of the gorgeous cliffs.
The cave that I faced was not one of those that I had
seen from the ground, and which lay much higher, possibly
a thousand feet. But so far as I might know it was as good
for our purpose as another, and so I returned to the tree
for Tars Tarkas.
Together we wormed our way along the waving pathway,
but when we reached the end of the branch we found that
our combined weight so depressed the limb that the cave's
mouth was now too far above us to be reached.
We finally agreed that Tars Tarkas should return along the
branch, leaving his longest leather harness strap with me,
and that when the limb had risen to a height that would
permit me to enter the cave I was to do so, and on Tars
Tarkas' return I could then lower the strap and haul him up
to the safety of the ledge.
This we did without mishap and soon found ourselves together
upon the verge of a dizzy little balcony, with a magnificent
view of the valley spreading out below us.
As far as the eye could reach gorgeous forest and crimson
sward skirted a silent sea, and about all towered the brilliant
monster guardian cliffs. Once we thought we discerned a
gilded minaret gleaming in the sun amidst the waving tops
of far-distant trees, but we soon abandoned the idea in the
belief that it was but an hallucination born of our great desire
to discover the haunts of civilized men in this beautiful, yet
forbidding, spot.
Below us upon the river's bank the great white apes were
devouring the last remnants of Tars Tarkas' former companions,
while great herds of plant men grazed in ever-widening circles
about the sward which they kept as close clipped as the
smoothest of lawns.
Knowing that attack from the tree was now improbable,
we determined to explore the cave, which we had every
reason to believe was but a continuation of the path we
had already traversed, leading the gods alone knew where,
but quite evidently away from this valley of grim ferocity.
As we advanced we found a well-proportioned tunnel cut from
the solid cliff. Its walls rose some twenty feet above the
floor, which was about five feet in width. The roof was arched.
We had no means of making a light, and so groped our way
slowly into the ever-increasing darkness, Tars Tarkas keeping
in touch with one wall while I felt along the other, while, to
prevent our wandering into diverging branches and becoming
separated or lost in some intricate and labyrinthine maze,
we clasped hands.
How far we traversed the tunnel in this manner I do not
know, but presently we came to an obstruction which blocked
our further progress. It seemed more like a partition than a
sudden ending of the cave, for it was constructed not of
the material of the cliff, but of something which felt like
very hard wood.
Silently I groped over its surface with my hands, and
presently was rewarded by the feel of the button which as
commonly denotes a door on Mars as does a door knob on Earth.
Gently pressing it, I had the satisfaction of feeling the
door slowly give before me, and in another instant we were
looking into a dimly lighted apartment, which, so far as we
could see, was unoccupied.
Without more ado I swung the door wide open and, followed
by the huge Thark, stepped into the chamber. As we stood
for a moment in silence gazing about the room a slight noise
behind caused me to turn quickly, when, to my astonishment,
I saw the door close with a sharp click as though by an
unseen hand.
Instantly I sprang toward it to wrench it open again,
for something in the uncanny movement of the thing and the
tense and almost palpable silence of the chamber seemed
to portend a lurking evil lying hidden in this rock-bound
chamber within the bowels of the Golden Cliffs.
My fingers clawed futilely at the unyielding portal, while
my eyes sought in vain for a duplicate of the button which
had given us ingress.
And then, from unseen lips, a cruel and mocking peal of
laughter rang through the desolate place.
CHAPTER III
THE CHAMBER OF MYSTERY
For moments after that awful laugh had ceased reverberating
through the rocky room, Tars Tarkas and I stood in tense and
expectant silence. But no further sound broke the stillness,
nor within the range of our vision did aught move.
At length Tars Tarkas laughed softly, after the manner of his
strange kind when in the presence of the horrible or terrifying.
It is not an hysterical laugh, but rather the genuine expression
of the pleasure they derive from the things that move Earth men
to loathing or to tears.
Often and again have I seen them roll upon the ground
in mad fits of uncontrollable mirth when witnessing the
death agonies of women and little children beneath the
torture of that hellish green Martian fete--the Great Games.
I looked up at the Thark, a smile upon my own lips, for here in
truth was greater need for a smiling face than a trembling chin.
"What do you make of it all?" I asked. "Where in the deuce are we?"
He looked at me in surprise.
"Where are we?" he repeated. "Do you tell me, John Carter,
that you know not where you be?"
"That I am upon Barsoom is all that I can guess, and but
for you and the great white apes I should not even guess
that, for the sights I have seen this day are as unlike the
things of my beloved Barsoom as I knew it ten long years
ago as they are unlike the world of my birth.
"No, Tars Tarkas, I know not where we be."
"Where have you been since you opened the mighty portals
of the atmosphere plant years ago, after the keeper had
died and the engines stopped and all Barsoom was dying,
that had not already died, of asphyxiation? Your body even
was never found, though the men of a whole world sought
after it for years, though the Jeddak of Helium and his
granddaughter, your princess, offered such fabulous rewards
that even princes of royal blood joined in the search.
"There was but one conclusion to reach when all efforts to
locate you had failed, and that, that you had taken the long,
last pilgrimage down the mysterious River Iss, to await in
the Valley Dor upon the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus
the beautiful Dejah Thoris, your princess.
"Why you had gone none could guess, for your princess still lived--"
"Thank God," I interrupted him. "I did not dare to ask you,
for I feared I might have been too late to save her--
she was very low when I left her in the royal gardens of
Tardos Mors that long-gone night; so very low that I scarcely
hoped even then to reach the atmosphere plant ere her dear
spirit had fled from me for ever. And she lives yet?"
"She lives, John Carter."
"You have not told me where we are," I reminded him.
"We are where I expected to find you, John Carter--and
another. Many years ago you heard the story of the woman
who taught me the thing that green Martians are reared to
hate, the woman who taught me to love. You know the cruel
tortures and the awful death her love won for her at the
hands of the beast, Tal Hajus.
"She, I thought, awaited me by the Lost Sea of Korus.
"You know that it was left for a man from another world,
for yourself, John Carter, to teach this cruel Thark what
friendship is; and you, I thought, also roamed the care-free
Valley Dor.
"Thus were the two I most longed for at the end of the
long pilgrimage I must take some day, and so as the time
had elapsed which Dejah Thoris had hoped might bring you
once more to her side, for she has always tried to believe that
you had but temporarily returned to your own planet, I at
last gave way to my great yearning and a month since I started
upon the journey, the end of which you have this day witnessed.
Do you understand now where you be, John Carter?"
"And that was the River Iss, emptying into the Lost Sea of
Korus in the Valley Dor?" I asked.
"This is the valley of love and peace and rest to which every
Barsoomian since time immemorial has longed to pilgrimage
at the end of a life of hate and strife and bloodshed,"
he replied. "This, John Carter, is Heaven."
His tone was cold and ironical; its bitterness but reflecting
the terrible disappointment he had suffered. Such a fearful
disillusionment, such a blasting of life-long hopes and aspirations,
such an uprooting of age-old tradition might have excused a vastly
greater demonstration on the part of the Thark.
I laid my hand upon his shoulder.
"I am sorry," I said, nor did there seem aught else to say.
"Think, John Carter, of the countless billions of Barsoomians
who have taken the voluntary pilgrimage down this cruel river
since the beginning of time, only to fall into the ferocious
clutches of the terrible creatures that to-day assailed us.
"There is an ancient legend that once a red man returned
from the banks of the Lost Sea of Korus, returned from the
Valley Dor, back through the mysterious River Iss, and the
legend has it that he narrated a fearful blasphemy of horrid
brutes that inhabited a valley of wondrous loveliness,
brutes that pounced upon each Barsoomian as he terminated
his pilgrimage and devoured him upon the banks of the Lost
Sea where he had looked to find love and peace and happiness;
but the ancients killed the blasphemer, as tradition has
ordained that any shall be killed who return from the bosom
of the River of Mystery.
"But now we know that it was no blasphemy, that the
legend is a true one, and that the man told only of what he
saw; but what does it profit us, John Carter, since even should
we escape, we also would be treated as blasphemers? We
are between the wild thoat of certainty and the mad zitidar
of fact--we can escape neither."
"As Earth men say, we are between the devil and the deep sea,
Tars Tarkas," I replied, nor could I help but smile at our dilemma.
"There is naught that we can do but take things as they come,
and at least have the satisfaction of knowing that whoever
slays us eventually will have far greater numbers of their
own dead to count than they will get in return. White ape or
plant man, green Barsoomian or red man, whosoever it shall
be that takes the last toll from us will know that it is costly
in lives to wipe out John Carter, Prince of the House of
Tardos Mors, and Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, at the same time."
I could not help but laugh at him grim humour, and he
joined in with me in one of those rare laughs of real
enjoyment which was one of the attributes of this fierce
Tharkian chief which marked him from the others of his kind.
"But about yourself, John Carter," he cried at last. "If you
have not been here all these years where indeed have you
been, and how is it that I find you here to-day?"
"I have been back to Earth," I replied. "For ten long Earth
years I have been praying and hoping for the day that would
carry me once more to this grim old planet of yours, for
which, with all its cruel and terrible customs, I feel a bond
of sympathy and love even greater than for the world that
gave me birth.
"For ten years have I been enduring a living death of
uncertainty and doubt as to whether Dejah Thoris lived, and
now that for the first time in all these years my prayers have
been answered and my doubt relieved I find myself, through
a cruel whim of fate, hurled into the one tiny spot of all
Barsoom from which there is apparently no escape, and if
there were, at a price which would put out for ever the last
flickering hope which I may cling to of seeing my princess
again in this life--and you have seen to-day with what pitiful
futility man yearns toward a material hereafter.
"Only a bare half-hour before I saw you battling with the
plant men I was standing in the moonlight upon the banks of
a broad river that taps the eastern shore of Earth's most
blessed land. I have answered you, my friend. Do you believe?"
"I believe," replied Tars Tarkas, "though I cannot understand."
As we talked I had been searching the interior of the
chamber with my eyes. It was, perhaps, two hundred feet
in length and half as broad, with what appeared to be a
doorway in the centre of the wall directly opposite that
through which we had entered.
The apartment was hewn from the material of the cliff,
showing mostly dull gold in the dim light which a single
minute radium illuminator in the centre of the roof diffused
throughout its great dimensions. Here and there polished
surfaces of ruby, emerald, and diamond patched the golden
walls and ceiling. The floor was of another material, very
hard, and worn by much use to the smoothness of glass.
Aside from the two doors I could discern no sign of other
aperture, and as one we knew to be locked against us I
approached the other.
As I extended my hand to search for the controlling button,
that cruel and mocking laugh rang out once more, so
close to me this time that I involuntarily shrank back,
tightening my grip upon the hilt of my great sword.
And then from the far corner of the great chamber a hollow
voice chanted: "There is no hope, there is no hope;
the dead return not, the dead return not; nor is there
any resurrection. Hope not, for there is no hope."
Though our eyes instantly turned toward the spot from
which the voice seemed to emanate, there was no one in
sight, and I must admit that cold shivers played along my
spine and the short hairs at the base of my head stiffened
and rose up, as do those upon a hound's neck when in the
night his eyes see those uncanny things which are hidden
from the sight of man.
Quickly I walked toward the mournful voice, but it had
ceased ere I reached the further wall, and then from the other
end of the chamber came another voice, shrill and piercing:
"Fools! Fools!" it shrieked. "Thinkest thou to defeat the
eternal laws of life and death? Wouldst cheat the mysterious
Issus, Goddess of Death, of her just dues? Did not her mighty
messenger, the ancient Iss, bear you upon her leaden bosom
at your own behest to the Valley Dor?
"Thinkest thou, O fools, that Issus wilt give up her own?
Thinkest thou to escape from whence in all the countless
ages but a single soul has fled?
"Go back the way thou camest, to the merciful maws of the
children of the Tree of Life or the gleaming fangs of the
great white apes, for there lies speedy surcease from suffering;
but insist in your rash purpose to thread the mazes of the
Golden Cliffs of the Mountains of Otz, past the ramparts
of the impregnable fortresses of the Holy Therns, and upon
your way Death in its most frightful form will overtake you
--a death so horrible that even the Holy Therns themselves,
who conceived both Life and Death, avert their eyes from
its fiendishness and close their ears against the hideous
shrieks of its victims.
"Go back, O fools, the way thou camest."
And then the awful laugh broke out from another part
of the chamber.
"Most uncanny," I remarked, turning to Tars Tarkas.
"What shall we do?" he asked. "We cannot fight empty
air; I would almost sooner return and face foes into whose
flesh I may feel my blade bite and know that I am selling
my carcass dearly before I go down to that eternal oblivion
which is evidently the fairest and most desirable eternity that
mortal man has the right to hope for."
"If, as you say, we cannot fight empty air, Tars Tarkas,"
I replied, "neither, on the other hand, can empty air fight us.
I, who have faced and conquered in my time thousands of sinewy
warriors and tempered blades, shall not be turned back by wind;
nor no more shall you, Thark."
"But unseen voices may emanate from unseen and unseeable
creatures who wield invisible blades," answered the green warrior.
"Rot, Tars Tarkas," I cried, "those voices come from beings
as real as you or as I. In their veins flows lifeblood that
may be let as easily as ours, and the fact that they remain
invisible to us is the best proof to my mind that they are
mortal; nor overly courageous mortals at that. Think you,
Tars Tarkas, that John Carter will fly at the first shriek of a
cowardly foe who dare not come out into the open and face a good blade?"
I had spoken in a loud voice that there might be no
question that our would-be terrorizers should hear me, for I
was tiring of this nerve-racking fiasco. It had occurred to me,
too, that the whole business was but a plan to frighten us
back into the valley of death from which we had escaped, that
we might be quickly disposed of by the savage creatures there.
For a long period there was silence, then of a sudden a soft,
stealthy sound behind me caused me to turn suddenly to behold
a great many-legged banth creeping sinuously upon me.
The banth is a fierce beast of prey that roams the low
hills surrounding the dead seas of ancient Mars. Like nearly
all Martian animals it is almost hairless, having only a great
bristly mane about its thick neck.
Its long, lithe body is supported by ten powerful legs, its
enormous jaws are equipped, like those of the calot, or
Martian hound, with several rows of long needle-like fangs;
its mouth reaches to a point far back of its tiny ears, while
its enormous, protruding eyes of green add the last touch of
terror to its awful aspect.
As it crept toward me it lashed its powerful tail against
its yellow sides, and when it saw that it was discovered it
emitted the terrifying roar which often freezes its prey into
momentary paralysis in the instant that it makes its spring.
And so it launched its great bulk toward me, but its
mighty voice had held no paralysing terrors for me, and
it met cold steel instead of the tender flesh its cruel jaws
gaped so widely to engulf.
An instant later I drew my blade from the still heart of
this great Barsoomian lion, and turning toward Tars Tarkas
was surprised to see him facing a similar monster.
No sooner had he dispatched his than I, turning, as though
drawn by the instinct of my guardian subconscious mind,
beheld another of the savage denizens of the Martian wilds
leaping across the chamber toward me.
From then on for the better part of an hour one hideous
creature after another was launched upon us, springing
apparently from the empty air about us.
Tars Tarkas was satisfied; here was something tangible that
he could cut and slash with his great blade, while I, for my
part, may say that the diversion was a marked improvement
over the uncanny voices from unseen lips.
That there was nothing supernatural about our new foes was
well evidenced by their howls of rage and pain as they felt
the sharp steel at their vitals, and the very real blood
which flowed from their severed arteries as they died the
real death.
I noticed during the period of this new persecution that the
beasts appeared only when our backs were turned; we never saw
one really materialize from thin air, nor did I for an instant
sufficiently lose my excellent reasoning faculties to be once
deluded into the belief that the beasts came into the room
other than through some concealed and well-contrived doorway.
Among the ornaments of Tars Tarkas' leather harness,
which is the only manner of clothing worn by Martians other
than silk capes and robes of silk and fur for protection from
the cold after dark, was a small mirror, about the bigness
of a lady's hand glass, which hung midway between his
shoulders and his waist against his broad back.
Once as he stood looking down at a newly fallen antagonist
my eyes happened to fall upon this mirror and in its shiny
surface I saw pictured a sight that caused me to whisper:
"Move not, Tars Tarkas! Move not a muscle!"
He did not ask why, but stood like a graven image
while my eyes watched the strange thing that meant so
much to us.
What I saw was the quick movement of a section of the
wall behind me. It was turning upon pivots, and with it a
section of the floor directly in front of it was turning. It was
as though you placed a visiting-card upon end on a silver
dollar that you had laid flat upon a table, so that the edge
of the card perfectly bisected the surface of the coin.
The card might represent the section of the wall that turned
and the silver dollar the section of the floor. Both were so
nicely fitted into the adjacent portions of the floor and wall
that no crack had been noticeable in the dim light of the chamber.
As the turn was half completed a great beast was revealed
sitting upon its haunches upon that part of the revolving floor
that had been on the opposite side before the wall commenced
to move; when the section stopped, the beast was facing toward
me on our side of the partition--it was very simple.
But what had interested me most was the sight that the
half-turned section had presented through the opening that
it had made. A great chamber, well lighted, in which were
several men and women chained to the wall, and in front of
them, evidently directing and operating the movement of the
secret doorway, a wicked-faced man, neither red as are the
red men of Mars, nor green as are the green men, but white,
like myself, with a great mass of flowing yellow hair.
The prisoners behind him were red Martians. Chained with
them were a number of fierce beasts, such as had been turned
upon us, and others equally as ferocious.
As I turned to meet my new foe it was with a heart
considerably lightened.
"Watch the wall at your end of the chamber, Tars Tarkas,"
I cautioned, "it is through secret doorways in the wall that
the brutes are loosed upon us." I was very close to him and
spoke in a low whisper that my knowledge of their secret
might not be disclosed to our tormentors.
As long as we remained each facing an opposite end of
the apartment no further attacks were made upon us, so it
was quite clear to me that the partitions were in some way
pierced that our actions might be observed from without.
At length a plan of action occurred to me, and backing quite
close to Tars Tarkas I unfolded my scheme in a low whisper,
keeping my eyes still glued upon my end of the room.
The great Thark grunted his assent to my proposition when I
had done, and in accordance with my plan commenced backing
toward the wall which I faced while I advanced slowly ahead of him.
When we had reached a point some ten feet from the
secret doorway I halted my companion, and cautioning him
to remain absolutely motionless until I gave the prearranged
signal I quickly turned my back to the door through which
I could almost feel the burning and baleful eyes of our
would be executioner.
Instantly my own eyes sought the mirror upon Tars Tarkas' back
and in another second I was closely watching the section of the
wall which had been disgorging its savage terrors upon us.
I had not long to wait, for presently the golden surface
commenced to move rapidly. Scarcely had it started than I
gave the signal to Tars Tarkas, simultaneously springing for
the receding half of the pivoting door. In like manner the
Thark wheeled and leaped for the opening being made by
the inswinging section.
A single bound carried me completely through into the
adjoining room and brought me face to face with the fellow
whose cruel face I had seen before. He was about my own
height and well muscled and in every outward detail moulded
precisely as are Earth men.
At his side hung a long-sword, a short-sword, a dagger, and one
of the destructive radium revolvers that are common upon Mars.
The fact that I was armed only with a long-sword, and so
according to the laws and ethics of battle everywhere upon
Barsoom should only have been met with a similar or lesser weapon,
seemed to have no effect upon the moral sense of my enemy,
for he whipped out his revolver ere I scarce had touched the
floor by his side, but an uppercut from my long-sword sent it
flying from his grasp before he could discharge it.
Instantly he drew his long-sword, and thus evenly armed we set to
in earnest for one of the closest battles I ever have fought.
The fellow was a marvellous swordsman and evidently in practice,
while I had not gripped the hilt of a sword for ten long years
before that morning.
But it did not take me long to fall easily into my fighting stride,
so that in a few minutes the man began to realize that he had at last
met his match.
His face became livid with rage as he found my guard impregnable,
while blood flowed from a dozen minor wounds upon his face and body.
"Who are you, white man?" he hissed. "That you are no
Barsoomian from the outer world is evident from your colour.
And you are not of us."
His last statement was almost a question.
"What if I were from the Temple of Issus?" I hazarded on a wild guess.
"Fate forfend!" he exclaimed, his face going white under
the blood that now nearly covered it.
I did not know how to follow up my lead, but I carefully laid
the idea away for future use should circumstances require it.
His answer indicated that for all he KNEW I might be from
the Temple of Issus and in it were men like unto myself,
and either this man feared the inmates of the temple or else
he held their persons or their power in such reverence that he
trembled to think of the harm and indignities he had heaped
upon one of them.
But my present business with him was of a different nature
than that which requires any considerable abstract reasoning;
it was to get my sword between his ribs, and this I succeeded
in doing within the next few seconds, nor was I an instant too soon.
The chained prisoners had been watching the combat in
tense silence; not a sound had fallen in the room other than
the clashing of our contending blades, the soft shuffling of
our naked feet and the few whispered words we had hissed
at each other through clenched teeth the while we continued
our mortal duel.
But as the body of my antagonist sank an inert mass to
the floor a cry of warning broke from one of the female prisoners.
"Turn! Turn! Behind you!" she shrieked, and as I wheeled
at the first note of her shrill cry I found myself facing a
second man of the same race as he who lay at my feet.
The fellow had crept stealthily from a dark corridor and
was almost upon me with raised sword ere I saw him. Tars
Tarkas was nowhere in sight and the secret panel in the wall,
through which I had come, was closed.
How I wished that he were by my side now! I had fought
almost continuously for many hours; I had passed through such
experiences and adventures as must sap the vitality of man,
and with all this I had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours,
nor slept.
I was fagged out, and for the first time in years felt a
question as to my ability to cope with an antagonist; but
there was naught else for it than to engage my man, and
that as quickly and ferociously as lay in me, for my only
salvation was to rush him off his feet by the impetuosity of
my attack--I could not hope to win a long-drawn-out battle.
But the fellow was evidently of another mind, for he backed
and parried and parried and sidestepped until I was almost
completely fagged from the exertion of attempting to finish him.
He was a more adroit swordsman, if possible, than my previous foe,
and I must admit that he led me a pretty chase and in the end
came near to making a sorry fool of me--and a dead one into the bargain.
I could feel myself growing weaker and weaker, until at
length objects commenced to blur before my eyes and I
staggered and blundered about more asleep than awake,
and then it was that he worked his pretty little coup
that came near to losing me my life.
He had backed me around so that I stood in front of the
corpse of his fellow, and then he rushed me suddenly so that
I was forced back upon it, and as my heel struck it the
impetus of my body flung me backward across the dead man.
My head struck the hard pavement with a resounding
whack, and to that alone I owe my life, for it cleared my
brain and the pain roused my temper, so that I was equal
for the moment to tearing my enemy to pieces with my bare
hands, and I verily believe that I should have attempted it had
not my right hand, in the act of raising my body from the
ground, come in contact with a bit of cold metal.
As the eyes of the layman so is the hand of the fighting man
when it comes in contact with an implement of his vocation,
and thus I did not need to look or reason to know that
the dead man's revolver, lying where it had fallen when I
struck it from his grasp, was at my disposal.
The fellow whose ruse had put me down was springing toward me,
the point of his gleaming blade directed straight at my heart,
and as he came there rang from his lips the cruel and mocking peal
of laughter that I had heard within the Chamber of Mystery.
And so he died, his thin lips curled in the snarl of his hateful
laugh, and a bullet from the revolver of his dead companion
bursting in his heart.
His body, borne by the impetus of his headlong rush, plunged upon me.
The hilt of his sword must have struck my head, for with the impact
of the corpse I lost consciousness.
CHAPTER IV
THUVIA
It was the sound of conflict that aroused me once more to
the realities of life. For a moment I could neither place my
surroundings nor locate the sounds which had aroused me.
And then from beyond the blank wall beside which I lay I
heard the shuffling of feet, the snarling of grim beasts, the
clank of metal accoutrements, and the heavy breathing of a man.
As I rose to my feet I glanced hurriedly about the chamber
in which I had just encountered such a warm reception. The
prisoners and the savage brutes rested in their chains by the
opposite wall eyeing me with varying expressions of curiosity,
sullen rage, surprise, and hope.
The latter emotion seemed plainly evident upon the handsome
and intelligent face of the young red Martian woman whose cry
of warning had been instrumental in saving my life.
She was the perfect type of that remarkably beautiful race
whose outward appearance is identical with the more god-like
races of Earth men, except that this higher race of Martians
is of a light reddish copper colour. As she was entirely
unadorned I could not even guess her station in life, though
it was evident that she was either a prisoner or slave in her
present environment.
It was several seconds before the sounds upon the opposite
side of the partition jolted my slowly returning faculties into
a realization of their probable import, and then of a sudden I
grasped the fact that they were caused by Tars Tarkas in
what was evidently a desperate struggle with wild beasts or
savage men.
With a cry of encouragement I threw my weight against the
secret door, but as well have assayed the down-hurling of the
cliffs themselves. Then I sought feverishly for the secret of the
revolving panel, but my search was fruitless, and I was about
to raise my longsword against the sullen gold when the young
woman prisoner called out to me.
"Save thy sword, O Mighty Warrior, for thou shalt need it
more where it will avail to some purpose--shatter it not
against senseless metal which yields better to the lightest finger
touch of one who knows its secret."
"Know you the secret of it then?" I asked.
"Yes; release me and I will give you entrance to the other
horror chamber, if you wish. The keys to my fetters are upon
the first dead of thy foemen. But why would you return
to face again the fierce banth, or whatever other form of
destruction they have loosed within that awful trap?"
"Because my friend fights there alone," I answered, as I
hastily sought and found the keys upon the carcass of the
dead custodian of this grim chamber of horrors.
There were many keys upon the oval ring, but the fair Martian maid
quickly selected that which sprung the great lock at her waist,
and freed she hurried toward the secret panel.
Again she sought out a key upon the ring. This time a slender,
needle-like affair which she inserted in an almost invisible hole
in the wall. Instantly the door swung upon its pivot, and the
contiguous section of the floor upon which I was standing
carried me with it into the chamber where Tars Tarkas fought.
The great Thark stood with his back against an angle of the
walls, while facing him in a semi-circle a half-dozen huge
monsters crouched waiting for an opening. Their blood-
streaked heads and shoulders testified to the cause of their
wariness as well as to the swordsmanship of the green warrior
whose glossy hide bore the same mute but eloquent witness to
the ferocity of the attacks that he had so far withstood.
Sharp talons and cruel fangs had torn leg, arm, and breast
literally to ribbons. So weak was he from continued exertion
and loss of blood that but for the supporting wall I doubt
that he even could have stood erect. But with the tenacity and
indomitable courage of his kind he still faced his cruel and
relentless foes--the personification of that ancient proverb of
his tribe: "Leave to a Thark his head and one hand and
he may yet conquer."
As he saw me enter, a grim smile touched those grim lips
of his, but whether the smile signified relief or merely
amusement at the sight of my own bloody and dishevelled
condition I do not know.
As I was about to spring into the conflict with my sharp
long-sword I felt a gentle hand upon my shoulder and turning
found, to my surprise, that the young woman had followed me
into the chamber.
"Wait," she whispered, "leave them to me," and pushing me advanced,
all defenceless and unarmed, upon the snarling banths.
When quite close to them she spoke a single Martian word
in low but peremptory tones. Like lightning the great beasts
wheeled upon her, and I looked to see her torn to pieces
before I could reach her side, but instead the creatures slunk
to her feet like puppies that expect a merited whipping.
Again she spoke to them, but in tones so low I could not
catch the words, and then she started toward the opposite side
of the chamber with the six mighty monsters trailing at heel.
One by one she sent them through the secret panel into the
room beyond, and when the last had passed from the chamber
where we stood in wide-eyed amazement she turned and smiled
at us and then herself passed through, leaving us alone.
For a moment neither of us spoke. Then Tars Tarkas said:
"I heard the fighting beyond the partition through which you
passed, but I did not fear for you, John Carter, until I heard
the report of a revolver shot. I knew that there lived no man
upon all Barsoom who could face you with naked steel and live,
but the shot stripped the last vestige of hope from me,
since you I knew to be without firearms. Tell me of it."
I did as he bade, and then together we sought the secret
panel through which I had just entered the apartment--the
one at the opposite end of the room from that through which
the girl had led her savage companions.
To our disappointment the panel eluded our every effort to
negotiate its secret lock. We felt that once beyond it we
might look with some little hope of success for a passage to
the outside world.
The fact that the prisoners within were securely chained
led us to believe that surely there must be an avenue of
escape from the terrible creatures which inhabited this
unspeakable place.
Again and again we turned from one door to another,
from the baffling golden panel at one end of the chamber to its
mate at the other--equally baffling.
When we had about given up all hope one of the panels
turned silently toward us, and the young woman who had led
away the banths stood once more beside us.
"Who are you?" she asked, "and what your mission, that
you have the temerity to attempt to escape from the Valley
Dor and the death you have chosen?"
"I have chosen no death, maiden," I replied. "I am not of
Barsoom, nor have I taken yet the voluntary pilgrimage upon
the River Iss. My friend here is Jeddak of all the Tharks,
and though he has not yet expressed a desire to return to
the living world, I am taking him with me from the living
lie that hath lured him to this frightful place.
"I am of another world. I am John Carter, Prince of the
House of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Perchance some
faint rumour of me may have leaked within the confines of
your hellish abode."
She smiled.
"Yes," she replied, "naught that passes in the world we have
left is unknown here. I have heard of you, many years ago.
The therns have ofttimes wondered whither you had flown,
since you had neither taken the pilgrimage, nor could
be found upon the face of Barsoom."
"Tell me," I said, "and who be you, and why a prisoner,
yet with power over the ferocious beasts of the place that
denotes familiarity and authority far beyond that which might
be expected of a prisoner or a slave?"
"Slave I am," she answered. "For fifteen years a slave in
this terrible place, and now that they have tired of me and
become fearful of the power which my knowledge of their ways
has given me I am but recently condemned to die the death."
She shuddered.
"What death?" I asked.
"The Holy Therns eat human flesh," she answered me; "but
only that which has died beneath the sucking lips of a plant
man--flesh from which the defiling blood of life has been
drawn. And to this cruel end I have been condemned. It
was to be within a few hours, had your advent not caused an
interruption of their plans."
"Was it then Holy Therns who felt the weight of John
Carter's hand?" I asked.
"Oh, no; those whom you laid low are lesser therns; but
of the same cruel and hateful race. The Holy Therns abide
upon the outer slopes of these grim hills, facing the broad
world from which they harvest their victims and their spoils.
"Labyrinthine passages connect these caves with the luxurious
palaces of the Holy Therns, and through them pass upon their
many duties the lesser therns, and hordes of slaves,
and prisoners, and fierce beasts; the grim inhabitants of
this sunless world.
"There be within this vast network of winding passages
and countless chambers men, women, and beasts who, born
within its dim and gruesome underworld, have never seen
the light of day--nor ever shall.
"They are kept to do the bidding of the race of therns; to
furnish at once their sport and their sustenance.
"Now and again some hapless pilgrim, drifting out upon
the silent sea from the cold Iss, escapes the plant men and
the great white apes that guard the Temple of Issus and falls
into the remorseless clutches of the therns; or, as was my
misfortune, is coveted by the Holy Thern who chances to be
upon watch in the balcony above the river where it issues
from the bowels of the mountains through the cliffs of gold
to empty into the Lost Sea of Korus.
"All who reach the Valley Dor are, by custom, the rightful
prey of the plant men and the apes, while their arms and
ornaments become the portion of the therns; but if one escapes
the terrible denizens of the valley for even a few hours
the therns may claim such a one as their own. And again
the Holy Thern on watch, should he see a victim he covets,
often tramples upon the rights of the unreasoning brutes of
the valley and takes his prize by foul means if he cannot
gain it by fair.
"It is said that occasionally some deluded victim of
Barsoomian superstition will so far escape the clutches of
the countless enemies that beset his path from the moment that
he emerges from the subterranean passage through which the
Iss flows for a thousand miles before it enters the Valley Dor
as to reach the very walls of the Temple of Issus; but what
fate awaits one there not even the Holy Therns may guess,
for who has passed within those gilded walls never has
returned to unfold the mysteries they have held since the
beginning of time.
"The Temple of Issus is to the therns what the Valley
Dor is imagined by the peoples of the outer world to be to
them; it is the ultimate haven of peace, refuge, and happiness
to which they pass after this life and wherein an eternity of
eternities is spent amidst the delights of the flesh which appeal
most strongly to this race of mental giants and moral pygmies."
"The Temple of Issus is, I take it, a heaven within a
heaven," I said. "Let us hope that there it will be meted to
the therns as they have meted it here unto others."
"Who knows?" the girl murmured.
"The therns, I judge from what you have said, are no
less mortal than we; and yet have I always heard them spoken
of with the utmost awe and reverence by the people of
Barsoom, as one might speak of the gods themselves."
"The therns are mortal," she replied. "They die from the
same causes as you or I might: those who do not live their
allotted span of life, one thousand years, when by the authority
of custom they may take their way in happiness through the
long tunnel that leads to Issus.
"Those who die before are supposed to spend the balance
of their allotted time in the image of a plant man, and it
is for this reason that the plant men are held sacred by the
therns, since they believe that each of these hideous creatures
was formerly a thern."
"And should a plant man die?" I asked.
"Should he die before the expiration of the thousand years
from the birth of the thern whose immortality abides within
him then the soul passes into a great white ape, but should
the ape die short of the exact hour that terminates the thousand
years the soul is for ever lost and passes for all eternity
into the carcass of the slimy and fearsome silian whose wriggling
thousands seethe the silent sea beneath the hurtling moons when
the sun has gone and strange shapes walk through the Valley Dor."
"We sent several Holy Therns to the silians to-day, then,"
said Tars Tarkas, laughing.
"And so will your death be the more terrible when it comes,"
said the maiden. "And come it will--you cannot escape."
"One has escaped, centuries ago," I reminded her, "and
what has been done may be done again."
"It is useless even to try," she answered hopelessly.
"But try we shall," I cried, and you shall go with us, if you wish."
"To be put to death by mine own people, and render
my memory a disgrace to my family and my nation? A
Prince of the House of Tardos Mors should know better
than to suggest such a thing."
Tars Tarkas listened in silence, but I could feel his eyes
riveted upon me and I knew that he awaited my answer as one might
listen to the reading of his sentence by the foreman of a jury.
What I advised the girl to do would seal our fate as well, since
if I bowed to the inevitable decree of age-old superstition we must
all remain and meet our fate in some horrible form within this awful
abode of horror and cruelty.
"We have the right to escape if we can," I answered.
"Our own moral senses will not be offended if we succeed,
for we know that the fabled life of love and peace in the
blessed Valley of Dor is a rank and wicked deception. We
know that the valley is not sacred; we know that the Holy
Therns are not holy; that they are a race of cruel and
heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to come
than we do.
"Not only is it our right to bend every effort to escape
--it is a solemn duty from which we should not shrink even
though we know that we should be reviled and tortured by
our own peoples when we returned to them.
"Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though
the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is,
I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid
infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be
craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty
which confronts us.
"Again there is a chance that with the weight of the testimony
of several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted,
and at least a compromise effected which will result in the
dispatching of an expedition of investigation to this
hideous mockery of heaven."
Both the girl and the green warrior stood silent in thought for
some moments. The former it was who eventually broke the silence.
"Never had I considered the matter in that light before,"
she said. "Indeed would I give my life a thousand times if I
could but save a single soul from the awful life that I have
led in this cruel place. Yes, you are right, and I will go with
you as far as we can go; but I doubt that we ever shall escape."
I turned an inquiring glance toward the Thark.
"To the gates of Issus, or to the bottom of Korus," spoke the
green warrior; "to the snows to the north or to the snows
to the south, Tars Tarkas follows where John Carter leads.
I have spoken."
"Come, then," I cried, "we must make the start, for we
could not be further from escape than we now are in the
heart of this mountain and within the four walls of this
chamber of death."
"Come, then," said the girl, "but do not flatter yourself that you
can find no worse place than this within the territory of the therns."
So saying she swung the secret panel that separated us
from the apartment in which I had found her, and we stepped
through once more into the presence of the other prisoners.
There were in all ten red Martians, men and women, and
when we had briefly explained our plan they decided to join
forces with us, though it was evident that it was with some
considerable misgivings that they thus tempted fate by
opposing an ancient superstition, even though each knew
through cruel experience the fallacy of its entire fabric.
Thuvia, the girl whom I had first freed, soon had the
others at liberty. Tars Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the
two therns of their weapons, which included swords, daggers,
and two revolvers of the curious and deadly type manufactured
by the red Martians.
We distributed the weapons as far as they would go among
our followers, giving the firearms to two of the women;
Thuvia being one so armed.
With the latter as our guide we set off rapidly but cautiously
through a maze of passages, crossing great chambers hewn from
the solid metal of the cliff, following winding corridors,
ascending steep inclines, and now and again concealing ourselves
in dark recesses at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Our destination, Thuvia said, was a distant storeroom
where arms and ammunition in plenty might be found.
From there she was to lead us to the summit of the cliffs,
from where it would require both wondrous wit and mighty
fighting to win our way through the very heart of the
stronghold of the Holy Therns to the world without.
"And even then, O Prince," she cried, "the arm of the
Holy Thern is long. It reaches to every nation of Barsoom.
His secret temples are hidden in the heart of every community.
Wherever we go should we escape we shall find that word of our
coming has preceded us, and death awaits us before we may
pollute the air with our blasphemies."
We had proceeded for possibly an hour without serious
interruption, and Thuvia had just whispered to me that we
were approaching our first destination, when on entering a
great chamber we came upon a man, evidently a thern.
He wore in addition to his leathern trappings and jewelled
ornaments a great circlet of gold about his brow in the exact
centre of which was set an immense stone, the exact counterpart
of that which I had seen upon the breast of the little old
man at the atmosphere plant nearly twenty years before.
It is the one priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are
known to exist, and these were worn as the insignia of their
rank and position by the two old men in whose charge was
placed the operation of the great engines which pump the
artificial atmosphere to all parts of Mars from the huge
atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty portals placed
in my possession the ability to save from immediate extinction
the life of a whole world.
The stone worn by the thern who confronted us was of
about the same size as that which I had seen before; an inch
in diameter I should say. It scintillated nine different and
distinct rays; the seven primary colours of our earthly prism
and the two rays which are unknown upon Earth, but whose
wondrous beauty is indescribable.
As the thern saw us his eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.
"Stop!" he cried. "What means this, Thuvia?"
For answer the girl raised her revolver and fired point-
blank at him. Without a sound he sank to the earth, dead.
"Beast!" she hissed. "After all these years I am at last revenged."
Then as she turned toward me, evidently with a word of explanation
on her lips, her eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me,
and with a little exclamation she started toward me.
"O Prince," she cried, "Fate is indeed kind to us. The way
is still difficult, but through this vile thing upon the floor
we may yet win to the outer world. Notest thou not the
remarkable resemblance between this Holy Thern and thyself?"
The man was indeed of my precise stature, nor were his
eyes and features unlike mine; but his hair was a mass of
flowing yellow locks, like those of the two I had killed,
while mine is black and close cropped.
"What of the resemblance?" I asked the girl Thuvia. "Do
you wish me with my black, short hair to pose as a yellow-
haired priest of this infernal cult?"
She smiled, and for answer approached the body of the
man she had slain, and kneeling beside it removed the circlet
of gold from the forehead, and then to my utter amazement
lifted the entire scalp bodily from the corpse's head.
Rising, she advanced to my side and placing the yellow
wig over my black hair, crowned me with the golden circlet
set with the magnificent gem.
"Now don his harness, Prince," she said, "and you may pass
where you will in the realms of the therns, for Sator Throg
was a Holy Thern of the Tenth Cycle, and mighty among his kind."
As I stooped to the dead man to do her bidding I noted
that not a hair grew upon his head, which was quite as
bald as an egg.
"They are all thus from birth," explained Thuvia noting my
surprise. "The race from which they sprang were crowned
with a luxuriant growth of golden hair, but for many ages
the present race has been entirely bald. The wig, however,
has come to be a part of their apparel, and so important a part
do they consider it that it is cause for the deepest disgrace
were a thern to appear in public without it."
In another moment I stood garbed in the habiliments of a Holy Thern.
At Thuvia's suggestion two of the released prisoners bore
the body of the dead thern upon their shoulders with us as
we continued our journey toward the storeroom, which we
reached without further mishap.
Here the keys which Thuvia bore from the dead thern of
the prison vault were the means of giving us immediate
entrance to the chamber, and very quickly we were
thoroughly outfitted with arms and ammunition.
By this time I was so thoroughly fagged out that I could
go no further, so I threw myself upon the floor, bidding Tars
Tarkas to do likewise, and cautioning two of the released
prisoners to keep careful watch.
In an instant I was asleep.
CHAPTER V
CORRIDORS OF PERIL
How long I slept upon the floor of the storeroom I do not
know, but it must have been many hours.
I was awakened with a start by cries of alarm, and scarce
were my eyes opened, nor had I yet sufficiently collected my
wits to quite realize where I was, when a fusillade of shots
rang out, reverberating through the subterranean corridors in
a series of deafening echoes.
In an instant I was upon my feet. A dozen lesser therns
confronted us from a large doorway at the opposite end of
the storeroom from which we had entered. About me lay the
bodies of my companions, with the exception of Thuvia and
Tars Tarkas, who, like myself, had been asleep upon the floor
and thus escaped the first raking fire.
As I gained my feet the therns lowered their wicked rifles, their
faces distorted in mingled chagrin, consternation, and alarm.
Instantly I rose to the occasion.
"What means this?" I cried in tones of fierce anger. "Is Sator Throg
to be murdered by his own vassals?"
"Have mercy, O Master of the Tenth Cycle!" cried one of
the fellows, while the others edged toward the doorway as
though to attempt a surreptitious escape from the presence
of the mighty one.
"Ask them their mission here," whispered Thuvia at my elbow.
"What do you here, fellows?" I cried.
"Two from the outer world are at large within the dominions
of the therns. We sought them at the command of the Father
of Therns. One was white with black hair, the other a
huge green warrior," and here the fellow cast a suspicious
glance toward Tars Tarkas.
"Here, then, is one of them," spoke Thuvia, indicating the
Thark, "and if you will look upon this dead man by the door
perhaps you will recognize the other. It was left for Sator
Throg and his poor slaves to accomplish what the lesser
therns of the guard were unable to do--we have killed one
and captured the other; for this had Sator Throg given us
our liberty. And now in your stupidity have you come and
killed all but myself, and like to have killed the mighty
Sator Throg himself."
The men looked very sheepish and very scared.
"Had they not better throw these bodies to the plant men
and then return to their quarters, O Mighty One?" asked
Thuvia of me.
"Yes; do as Thuvia bids you," I said.
As the men picked up the bodies I noticed that the one
who stooped to gather up the late Sator Throg started as his
closer scrutiny fell upon the upturned face, and then the
fellow stole a furtive, sneaking glance in my direction from
the corner of his eye.
That he suspicioned something of the truth I could have sworn;
but that it was only a suspicion which he did not dare voice was
evidenced by his silence.
Again, as he bore the body from the room, he shot a quick
but searching glance toward me, and then his eyes fell once
more upon the bald and shiny dome of the dead man in his
arms. The last fleeting glimpse that I obtained of his profile
as he passed from my sight without the chamber revealed a
cunning smile of triumph upon his lips.
Only Tars Tarkas, Thuvia, and I were left. The fatal
marksmanship of the therns had snatched from our companions
whatever slender chance they had of gaining the perilous
freedom of the world without.
So soon as the last of the gruesome procession had disappeared
the girl urged us to take up our flight once more.
She, too, had noted the questioning attitude of the thern
who had borne Sator Throg away.
"It bodes no good for us, O Prince," she said. "For even
though this fellow dared not chance accusing you in error,
there be those above with power sufficient to demand a closer
scrutiny, and that, Prince would indeed prove fatal."
I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed that in any event the
outcome of our plight must end in death. I was refreshed from
my sleep, but still weak from loss of blood. My wounds were
painful. No medicinal aid seemed possible. How I longed
for the almost miraculous healing power of the strange salves
and lotions of the green Martian women. In an hour they
would have had me as new.
I was discouraged. Never had a feeling of such utter hopelessness
come over me in the face of danger. Then the long flowing, yellow
locks of the Holy Thern, caught by some vagrant draught, blew
about my face.
Might they not still open the way of freedom? If we acted
in time, might we not even yet escape before the general
alarm was sounded? We could at least try.
"What will the fellow do first, Thuvia?" I asked. "How long
will it be before they may return for us?"
"He will go directly to the Father of Therns, old Matai
Shang. He may have to wait for an audience, but since he is
very high among the lesser therns, in fact as a thorian among
them, it will not be long that Matai Shang will keep him waiting.
"Then if the Father of Therns puts credence in his story,
another hour will see the galleries and chambers, the courts
and gardens, filled with searchers."
"What we do then must be done within an hour. What is the
best way, Thuvia, the shortest way out of this celestial Hades?"
"Straight to the top of the cliffs, Prince," she replied, "and
then through the gardens to the inner courts. From there our
way will lie within the temples of the therns and across them to
the outer court. Then the ramparts--O Prince, it is hopeless.
Ten thousand warriors could not hew a way to liberty from out
this awful place.
"Since the beginning of time, little by little, stone by stone,
have the therns been ever adding to the defences of their
stronghold. A continuous line of impregnable fortifications
circles the outer slopes of the Mountains of Otz.
"Within the temples that lie behind the ramparts a million
fighting-men are ever ready. The courts and gardens are
filled with slaves, with women and with children.
"None could go a stone's throw without detection."
"If there is no other way, Thuvia, why dwell upon the
difficulties of this. We must face them."
"Can we not better make the attempt after dark?" asked
Tars Tarkas. "There would seem to be no chance by day."
"There would be a little better chance by night, but even
then the ramparts are well guarded; possibly better than by
day. There are fewer abroad in the courts and gardens,
though," said Thuvia.
"What is the hour?" I asked.
"It was midnight when you released me from my chains,"
said Thuvia. "Two hours later we reached the storeroom.
There you slept for fourteen hours. It must now be nearly
sundown again. Come, we will go to some nearby window in
the cliff and make sure."
So saying, she led the way through winding corridors
until at a sudden turn we came upon an opening which
overlooked the Valley Dor.
At our right the sun was setting, a huge red orb, below the
western range of Otz. A little below us stood the Holy Thern
on watch upon his balcony. His scarlet robe of office was
pulled tightly about him in anticipation of the cold that comes
so suddenly with darkness as the sun sets. So rare is the
atmosphere of Mars that it absorbs very little heat from the
sun. During the daylight hours it is always extremely hot; at
night it is intensely cold. Nor does the thin atmosphere
refract the sun's rays or diffuse its light as upon Earth.
There is no twilight on Mars. When the great orb of day disappears
beneath the horizon the effect is precisely as that of the
extinguishing of a single lamp within a chamber. From brilliant
light you are plunged without warning into utter darkness.
Then the moons come; the mysterious, magic moons of Mars,
hurtling like monster meteors low across the face of the planet.
The declining sun lighted brilliantly the eastern banks of
Korus, the crimson sward, the gorgeous forest. Beneath the
trees we saw feeding many herds of plant men. The adults
stood aloft upon their toes and their mighty tails, their talons
pruning every available leaf and twig. It was then that I
understood the careful trimming of the trees which had led
me to form the mistaken idea when first I opened my eyes upon
the grove that it was the playground of a civilized people.
As we watched, our eyes wandered to the rolling Iss,
which issued from the base of the cliffs beneath us.
Presently there emerged from the mountain a canoe laden with
lost souls from the outer world. There were a dozen of them.
All were of the highly civilized and cultured race of red men
who are dominant on Mars.
The eyes of the herald upon the balcony beneath us fell
upon the doomed party as soon as did ours. He raised his
head and leaning far out over the low rail that rimmed his
dizzy perch, voiced the shrill, weird wail that called the
demons of this hellish place to the attack.
For an instant the brutes stood with stiffly erected ears, then
they poured from the grove toward the river's bank, covering
the distance with great, ungainly leaps.
The party had landed and was standing on the sward as
the awful horde came in sight. There was a brief and futile
effort of defence. Then silence as the huge, repulsive shapes
covered the bodies of their victims and scores of sucking
mouths fastened themselves to the flesh of their prey.
I turned away in disgust.
"Their part is soon over," said Thuvia. "The great white apes
get the flesh when the plant men have drained the arteries.
Look, they are coming now."
As I turned my eyes in the direction the girl indicated, I
saw a dozen of the great white monsters running across the
valley toward the river bank. Then the sun went down and
darkness that could almost be felt engulfed us.
Thuvia lost no time in leading us toward the corridor
which winds back and forth up through the cliffs toward the
surface thousands of feet above the level on which we had been.
Twice great banths, wandering loose through the galleries,
blocked our progress, but in each instance Thuvia spoke a low
word of command and the snarling beasts slunk sullenly away.
"If you can dissolve all our obstacles as easily as you
master these fierce brutes I can see no difficulties in our way,"
I said to the girl, smiling. "How do you do it?"
She laughed, and then shuddered.
"I do not quite know," she said. "When first I came here I
angered Sator Throg, because I repulsed him. He ordered me
to be thrown into one of the great pits in the inner gardens.
It was filled with banths. In my own country I had been
accustomed to command. Something in my voice, I do not
know what, cowed the beasts as they sprang to attack me.
"Instead of tearing me to pieces, as Sator Throg had
desired, they fawned at my feet. So greatly were Sator Throg
and his friends amused by the sight that they kept me to train
and handle the terrible creatures. I know them all by name.
There are many of them wandering through these lower regions.
They are the scavengers. Many prisoners die here in their chains.
The banths solve the problem of sanitation, at least in this respect.
"In the gardens and temples above they are kept in pits.
The therns fear them. It is because of the banths that they
seldom venture below ground except as their duties call them."
An idea occurred to me, suggested by what Thuvia had just said.
"Why not take a number of banths and set them loose before us
above ground?" I asked.
Thuvia laughed.
"It would distract attention from us, I am sure," she said.
She commenced calling in a low singsong voice that was
half purr. She continued this as we wound our tedious way
through the maze of subterranean passages and chambers.
Presently soft, padded feet sounded close behind us, and
as I turned I saw a pair of great, green eyes shining in the
dark shadows at our rear. From a diverging tunnel a sinuous,
tawny form crept stealthily toward us.
Low growls and angry snarls assailed our ears on every
side as we hastened on and one by one the ferocious
creatures answered the call of their mistress.
She spoke a word to each as it joined us. Like well-
schooled terriers, they paced the corridors with us, but I
could not help but note the lathering jowls, nor the hungry
expressions with which they eyed Tars Tarkas and myself.
Soon we were entirely surrounded by some fifty of the
brutes. Two walked close on either side of Thuvia, as guards
might walk. The sleek sides of others now and then touched
my own naked limbs. It was a strange experience; the
almost noiseless passage of naked human feet and padded
paws; the golden walls splashed with precious stones; the
dim light cast by the tiny radium bulbs set at considerable
distances along the roof; the huge, maned beasts of prey
crowding with low growls about us; the mighty green warrior
towering high above us all; myself crowned with the priceless
diadem of a Holy Thern; and leading the procession the
beautiful girl, Thuvia.
I shall not soon forget it.
Presently we approached a great chamber more brightly
lighted than the corridors. Thuvia halted us. Quietly she
stole toward the entrance and glanced within. Then she
motioned us to follow her.
The room was filled with specimens of the strange beings
that inhabit this underworld; a heterogeneous collection of
hybrids--the offspring of the prisoners from the outside
world; red and green Martians and the white race of therns.
Constant confinement below ground had wrought odd freaks
upon their skins. They more resemble corpses than living
beings. Many are deformed, others maimed, while the
majority, Thuvia explained, are sightless.
As they lay sprawled about the floor, sometimes overlapping
one another, again in heaps of several bodies, they suggested
instantly to me the grotesque illustrations that I had
seen in copies of Dante's INFERNO, and what more fitting
comparison? Was this not indeed a veritable hell, peopled
by lost souls, dead and damned beyond all hope?
Picking our way carefully we threaded a winding path
across the chamber, the great banths sniffing hungrily at
the tempting prey spread before them in such tantalizing and
defenceless profusion.
Several times we passed the entrances to other chambers similarly
peopled, and twice again we were compelled to cross directly
through them. In others were chained prisoners and beasts.
"Why is it that we see no therns?" I asked of Thuvia.
"They seldom traverse the underworld at night, for
then it is that the great banths prowl the dim corridors
seeking their prey. The therns fear the awful denizens of
this cruel and hopeless world that they have fostered and allowed
to grow beneath their feet. The prisoners even sometimes turn
upon them and rend them. The thern can never tell from
what dark shadow an assassin may spring upon his back.
"By day it is different. Then the corridors and chambers
are filled with guards passing to and fro; slaves from the
temples above come by hundreds to the granaries and
storerooms. All is life then. You did not see it because I led
you not in the beaten tracks, but through roundabout passages
seldom used. Yet it is possible that we may meet a thern even yet.
They do occasionally find it necessary to come here after the sun has set.
Because of this I have moved with such great caution."
But we reached the upper galleries without detection and
presently Thuvia halted us at the foot of a short, steep ascent.
"Above us," she said, "is a doorway which opens on to
the inner gardens. I have brought you thus far. From here
on for four miles to the outer ramparts our way will be beset
by countless dangers. Guards patrol the courts, the temples,
the gardens. Every inch of the ramparts themselves is
beneath the eye of a sentry."
I could not understand the necessity for such an enormous
force of armed men about a spot so surrounded by mystery
and superstition that not a soul upon Barsoom would have
dared to approach it even had they known its exact location.
I questioned Thuvia, asking her what enemies the therns could
fear in their impregnable fortress.
We had reached the doorway now and Thuvia was opening it.
"They fear the black pirates of Barsoom, O Prince," she
said, "from whom may our first ancestors preserve us."
The door swung open; the smell of growing things greeted
my nostrils; the cool night air blew against my cheek. The
great banths sniffed the unfamiliar odours, and then with a
rush they broke past us with low growls, swarming across the
gardens beneath the lurid light of the nearer moon.
Suddenly a great cry arose from the roofs of the temples;
a cry of alarm and warning that, taken up from point to
point, ran off to the east and to the west, from temple, court,
and rampart, until it sounded as a dim echo in the distance.
The great Thark's long-sword leaped from its scabbard;
Thuvia shrank shuddering to my side.
CHAPTER VI
THE BLACK PIRATES OF BARSOOM
"What is it?" I asked of the girl.
For answer she pointed to the sky.
I looked, and there, above us, I saw shadowy bodies flitting
hither and thither high over temple, court, and garden.
Almost immediately flashes of light broke from these strange
objects. There was a roar of musketry, and then answering
flashes and roars from temple and rampart.
"The black pirates of Barsoom, O Prince," said Thuvia.
In great circles the air craft of the marauders swept lower
and lower toward the defending forces of the therns.
Volley after volley they vomited upon the temple guards;
volley on volley crashed through the thin air toward the
fleeting and illusive fliers.
As the pirates swooped closer toward the ground, thern
soldiery poured from the temples into the gardens and courts.
The sight of them in the open brought a score of fliers
darting toward us from all directions.
The therns fired upon them through shields affixed to their
rifles, but on, steadily on, came the grim, black craft. They
were small fliers for the most part, built for two to three men.
A few larger ones there were, but these kept high aloft dropping
bombs upon the temples from their keel batteries.
At length, with a concerted rush, evidently in response to a
signal of command, the pirates in our immediate vicinity
dashed recklessly to the ground in the very midst of the
thern soldiery.
Scarcely waiting for their craft to touch, the creatures
manning them leaped among the therns with the fury of
demons. Such fighting! Never had I witnessed its like before.
I had thought the green Martians the most ferocious warriors
in the universe, but the awful abandon with which the black
pirates threw themselves upon their foes transcended everything
I ever before had seen.
Beneath the brilliant light of Mars' two glorious moons the
whole scene presented itself in vivid distinctness. The golden-
haired, white-skinned therns battling with desperate courage
in hand-to-hand conflict with their ebony-skinned foemen.
Here a little knot of struggling warriors trampled a bed of
gorgeous pimalia; the | |
