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PRINCESS OF MARS CONT

Dejah Thoris and I with the other members of the royal family had collected in a sunken garden within an inner courtyard of the palace. We conversed in low tones, when we conversed at all, as the awe of the grim shadow of death crept over us. Even Woola seemed to feel the weight of the impending calamity, for he pressed close to Dejah Thoris and to me, whining pitifully.

The little incubator had been brought from the roof of our palace at request of Dejah Thoris and she sat gazing longingly upon the unknown little life that now she would never know.

As it was becoming perceptibly difficult to breathe Tardos Mors arose, saying,

“Let us bid each other farewell. The days of the greatness of Barsoom are over. Tomorrow’s sun will look down upon a dead world which through all eternity must go swinging through the heavens peopled not even by memories. It is the end.”

He stooped and kissed the women of his family, and laid his strong hand upon the shoulders of the men.

As I turned sadly from him my eyes fell upon Dejah Thoris. Her head was drooping upon her breast, to all appearances she was lifeless. With a cry I sprang to her and raised her in my arms.

Her eyes opened and looked into mine.

“Kiss me, John Carter,” she murmured. “I love you! I love you! It is cruel that we must be torn apart who were just starting upon a life of love and happiness.”

As I pressed her dear lips to mine the old feeling of unconquerable power and authority rose in me. The fighting blood of Virginia sprang to life in my veins.

“It shall not be, my princess,” I cried. “There is, there must be some way, and John Carter, who has fought his way through a strange world for love of you, will find it.”

And with my words there crept above the threshold of my conscious mind a series of nine long forgotten sounds. Like a flash of lightning in the darkness their full purport dawned upon me—the key to the three great doors of the atmosphere plant!

Turning suddenly toward Tardos Mors as I still clasped my dying love to my breast I cried.

“A flier, Jeddak! Quick! Order your swiftest flier to the palace top. I can save Barsoom yet.”

He did not wait to question, but in an instant a guard was racing to the nearest dock and though the air was thin and almost gone at the rooftop they managed to launch the fastest one-man, air-scout machine that the skill of Barsoom had ever produced.

Kissing Dejah Thoris a dozen times and commanding Woola, who would have followed me, to remain and guard her, I bounded with my old agility and strength to the high ramparts of the palace, and in another moment I was headed toward the goal of the hopes of all Barsoom.

I had to fly low to get sufficient air to breathe, but I took a straight course across an old sea bottom and so had to rise only a few feet above the ground.

I traveled with awful velocity for my errand was a race against time with death. The face of Dejah Thoris hung always before me. As I turned for a last look as I left the palace garden I had seen her stagger and sink upon the ground beside the little incubator. That she had dropped into the last coma which would end in death, if the air supply remained unreplenished, I well knew, and so, throwing caution to the winds, I flung overboard everything but the engine and compass, even to my ornaments, and lying on my belly along the deck with one hand on the steering wheel and the other pushing the speed lever to its last notch I split the thin air of dying Mars with the speed of a meteor.

An hour before dark the great walls of the atmosphere plant loomed suddenly before me, and with a sickening thud I plunged to the ground before the small door which was withholding the spark of life from the inhabitants of an entire planet.

Beside the door a great crew of men had been laboring to pierce the wall, but they had scarcely scratched the flint-like surface, and now most of them lay in the last sleep from which not even air would awaken them.

Conditions seemed much worse here than at Helium, and it was with difficulty that I breathed at all. There were a few men still conscious, and to one of these I spoke.

“If I can open these doors is there a man who can start the engines?” I asked.

“I can,” he replied, “if you open quickly. I can last but a few moments more. But it is useless, they are both dead and no one else upon Barsoom knew the secret of these awful locks. For three days men crazed with fear have surged about this portal in vain attempts to solve its mystery.”

I had no time to talk, I was becoming very weak and it was with difficulty that I controlled my mind at all.

But, with a final effort, as I sank weakly to my knees I hurled the nine thought waves at that awful thing before me. The Martian had crawled to my side and with staring eyes fixed on the single panel before us we waited in the silence of death.

Slowly the mighty door receded before us. I attempted to rise and follow it but I was too weak.

“After it,” I cried to my companion, “and if you reach the pump room turn loose all the pumps. It is the only chance Barsoom has to exist tomorrow!”

From where I lay I opened the second door, and then the third, and as I saw the hope of Barsoom crawling weakly on hands and knees through the last doorway I sank unconscious upon the ground.
 
PRINCESS OF MARS CONT

CHAPTER XXVIII
AT THE ARIZONA CAVE
It was dark when I opened my eyes again. Strange, stiff garments were upon my body; garments that cracked and powdered away from me as I rose to a sitting posture.

I felt myself over from head to foot and from head to foot I was clothed, though when I fell unconscious at the little doorway I had been naked. Before me was a small patch of moonlit sky which showed through a ragged aperture.

As my hands passed over my body they came in contact with pockets and in one of these a small parcel of matches wrapped in oiled paper. One of these matches I struck, and its dim flame lighted up what appeared to be a huge cave, toward the back of which I discovered a strange, still figure huddled over a tiny bench. As I approached it I saw that it was the dead and mummified remains of a little old woman with long black hair, and the thing it leaned over was a small charcoal burner upon which rested a round copper vessel containing a small quantity of greenish powder.

Behind her, depending from the roof upon rawhide thongs, and stretching entirely across the cave, was a row of human skeletons. From the thong which held them stretched another to the dead hand of the little old woman; as I touched the cord the skeletons swung to the motion with a noise as of the rustling of dry leaves.

It was a most grotesque and horrid tableau and I hastened out into the fresh air; glad to escape from so gruesome a place.

The sight that met my eyes as I stepped out upon a small ledge which ran before the entrance of the cave filled me with consternation.

A new heaven and a new landscape met my gaze. The silvered mountains in the distance, the almost stationary moon hanging in the sky, the cacti-studded valley below me were not of Mars. I could scarce believe my eyes, but the truth slowly forced itself upon me—I was looking upon Arizona from the same ledge from which ten years before I had gazed with longing upon Mars.

Burying my head in my arms I turned, broken, and sorrowful, down the trail from the cave.

Above me shone the red eye of Mars holding her awful secret, forty-eight million miles away.

Did the Martian reach the pump room? Did the vitalizing air reach the people of that distant planet in time to save them? Was my Dejah Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body lie cold in death beside the tiny golden incubator in the sunken garden of the inner courtyard of the palace of Tardos Mors, the jeddak of Helium?

For ten years I have waited and prayed for an answer to my questions. For ten years I have waited and prayed to be taken back to the world of my lost love. I would rather lie dead beside her there than live on Earth all those millions of terrible miles from her.

The old mine, which I found untouched, has made me fabulously wealthy; but what care I for wealth!

As I sit here tonight in my little study overlooking the Hudson, just twenty years have elapsed since I first opened my eyes upon Mars.

I can see her shining in the sky through the little window by my desk, and tonight she seems calling to me again as she has not called before since that long dead night, and I think I can see, across that awful abyss of space, a beautiful black-haired woman standing in the garden of a palace, and at her side is a little boy who puts his arm around her as she points into the sky toward the planet Earth, while at their feet is a huge and hideous creature with a heart of gold.

I believe that they are waiting there for me, and something tells me that I shall soon know.

END OF PRINCESS OF MARS
I hope you all enjoyed it.
 
Don't get too excited, Liz, Project Gutenberg is a pretty big library.

As a change of pace, and to draw out the suspense before the next book in the Mars series, I bring you:

The Story of Little Black Sambo, and The Story of Little Black Mingo
Once upon a time there was a little black boy, and his name was Little Black Sambo.

And his mother was called Black Mumbo.

And his father was called Black Jumbo.

And Black Mumbo made him a beautiful little Red Coat, and a pair of beautiful little blue trousers.

And Black Jumbo went to the Bazaar, and bought him a beautiful Green Umbrella, and a lovely little Pair of Purple Shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings.

And then wasn’t Little Black Sambo grand?

So he put on all his Fine Clothes, and went out for a walk in the Jungle. And by and by he met a Tiger. And the Tiger said to him, “Little Black Sambo, I’m going to eat you up!” And Little Black Sambo said, “Oh! Please Mr. Tiger, don’t eat me up, and I’ll give you my beautiful little Red Coat.” So the Tiger said, “Very well, I won’t eat you this time, but you must give me your beautiful little Red Coat.” So the Tiger got poor Little Black Sambo’s beautiful little Red Coat, and went away saying, “Now I’m the grandest Tiger in the Jungle.”

And Little Black Sambo went on, and by and by he met another Tiger, and it said to him, “Little Black Sambo, I’m going to eat you up!” And Little Black Sambo said, “Oh! Please Mr. Tiger, don’t eat me up, and I’ll give you my beautiful little Blue Trousers.” So the Tiger said, “Very well, I won’t eat you this time, but you must give me your beautiful little Blue Trousers.” So the Tiger got poor Little Black Sambo’s beautiful little Blue Trousers, and went away saying, “Now I’m the grandest Tiger in the Jungle.”

And Little Black Sambo went on, and by and by he met another Tiger, and it said to him, “Little Black Sambo, I’m going to eat you up!” And Little Black Sambo said, “Oh! Please Mr. Tiger, don’t eat me up, and I’ll give you my beautiful little Purple Shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings.”

But the Tiger said, “What use would your shoes be to me? I’ve got four feet, and you’ve got only two; you haven’t got enough shoes for me.”

But Little Black Sambo said, “You could wear them on your ears.”

“So I could,” said the Tiger: “that’s a very good idea. Give them to me, and I won’t eat you this time.”

So the Tiger got poor Little Black Sambo’s beautiful little Purple Shoes with Crimson Soles and Crimson Linings, and went away saying, “Now I’m the grandest Tiger in the Jungle.”

And by and by Little Black Sambo met another Tiger, and it said to him, “Little Black Sambo, I’m going to eat you up!” And Little Black Sambo said, “Oh! Please Mr. Tiger, don’t eat me up, and I’ll give you my beautiful Green Umbrella.” But the Tiger said, “How can I carry an umbrella, when I need all my paws for walking with?”

“You could tie a knot on your tail and carry it that way,” said Little Black Sambo. “So I could,” said the Tiger. “Give it to me, and I won’t eat you this time.” So he got poor Little Black Sambo’s beautiful Green Umbrella, and went away saying, “Now I’m the grandest Tiger in the Jungle.”

And poor Little Black Sambo went away crying, because the cruel Tigers had taken all his fine clothes.

Presently he heard a horrible noise that sounded like “Gr-r-r-r-rrrrrr,” and it got louder and louder. “Oh! dear!” said Little Black Sambo, “there are all the Tigers coming back to eat me up! What shall I do?” So he ran quickly to a palm-tree, and peeped round it to see what the matter was.

And there he saw all the Tigers fighting, and disputing which of them was the grandest. And at last they all got so angry that they jumped up and took off all the fine clothes, and began to tear each other with their claws, and bite each other with their great big white teeth.

And they came, rolling and tumbling right to the foot of the very tree where Little Black Sambo was hiding, but he jumped quickly in behind the umbrella. And the Tigers all caught hold of each other’s tails, as they wrangled and scrambled, and so they found themselves in a ring round the tree.

Then, when the Tigers were very wee and very far away, Little Black Sambo jumped up, and called out, “Oh! Tigers! why have you taken off all your nice clothes? Don’t you want them any more?” But the Tigers only answered, “Gr-r-rrrr!”

Then Little Black Sambo said, “If you want them, say so, or I’ll take them away.” But the Tigers would not let go of each other’s tails, and so they could only say “Gr-r-r-rrrrrr!”

So Little Black Sambo put on all his fine clothes again and walked off.

And the Tigers were very, very angry, but still they would not let go of each other’s tails. And they were so angry, that they ran round the tree, trying to eat each other up, and they ran faster and faster, till they were whirling round so fast that you couldn’t see their legs at all.

And they still ran faster and faster and faster, till they all just melted away, and there was nothing left but a great big pool of melted butter (or “ghi,” as it is called in India) round the foot of the tree.

Now Black Jumbo was just coming home from his work, with a great big brass pot in his arms, and when he saw what was left of all the Tigers he said, “Oh! what lovely melted butter! I’ll take that home to Black Mumbo for her to cook with.”

So he put it all into the great big brass pot, and took it home to Black Mumbo to cook with.

When Black Mumbo saw the melted butter, wasn’t she pleased! “Now,” said she, “we’ll all have pancakes for supper!”

So she got flour and eggs and milk and sugar and butter, and she made a huge big plate of most lovely pancakes. And she fried them in the melted butter which the Tigers had made, and they were just as yellow and brown as little Tigers.

And then they all sat down to supper. And Black Mumbo ate Twenty-seven pancakes, and Black Jumbo ate Fifty-five but Little Black Sambo ate a Hundred and Sixty-nine, because he was so hungry.
 
LITTLE BLACK SAMBO CONT

THE STORY OF LITTLE BLACK MINGO
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Once upon a time there was a little black girl, and her name was Little Black Mingo.

She had no father and mother, so she had to live with a horrid cross old woman called Black Noggy, who used to scold her every day, and sometimes beat her with a stick, even though she had done nothing naughty.

One day Black Noggy called her, and said, “Take this chatty {ed. A chatty is a large ceramic vase used to carry water.} down to the river and fill it with water, and come back as fast as you can, QUICK NOW!”

So Little Black Mingo took the chatty and ran down to the river as fast as she could, and began to fill it with water, when Cr-r-rrrack!!! Bang!!! A horrible big Mugger {ed. A Mugger is an alligator like creature.} poked its nose up through the bottom of the chatty and said “Ha, ha!! Little Mingo, I’m going to eat you up!”

Little Black Mingo did not say anything. She turned and ran away as fast as ever she could, and the Mugger ran after her. But the broken chatty round his neck caught his paws, so he could not overtake her.

But when she got back to Black Noggy, and told her how the Mugger had broken the chatty, Black Noggy was fearfully angry. “You naughty girl,” she said, “you have broken the chatty yourself, I have a good mind to beat you.” And if she had not been in such a hurry for the water she WOULD have beaten her.

Then she went and fetched the great big chatty that the dhobi used to boil the clothes in. “Take this,” said she, “and mind you don’t break it, or I WILL beat you.”

“But I can’t carry that when it is full of water,” said Little Black Mingo.

“You must go twice, and bring it half full each time,” said Black Noggy.

So Little Black Mingo took the dhobi’s great big chatty, and started again to go to the river. But first she went to a little bank above the river, and peeped up and down, to see if she could see the old Mugger anywhere. But she could not see him, for he was hiding under the very bank she was standing on, and though his tail stuck out a little she never saw him at all.

She would have liked to run home, but she was too much afraid that Black Noggy would beat her.

So Little Black Mingo crept down to the river, and began to fill the big chatty with water. And while she was filling it the Mugger came creeping softly down behind her and caught her by the tail, saying, “Aha, Little Black Mingo, now I’ve got you.”

And Little Black Mingo said, “Oh! Please don’t eat me up, great big Mugger.”

“What will you give me, if I don’t eat you up?” said the Mugger. But Little Black Mingo was so poor she had nothing to give. So the Mugger caught her in his great cruel mouth and swam away with her to an island in the middle of the river and set her down beside a huge pile of eggs.

“Those are my eggs,” said he; “to-morrow a little mugger will come out of each, and then we will have a great feast, and we will eat you up.”

Then he waddled off to catch fish for himself, and left Little Black Mingo alone beside the big pile of eggs.

And Little Black Mingo sat down on a big stone and hid her face in her hands, and cried bitterly, because she couldn’t swim and she didn’t know how to get away.

Presently she heard a queer little squeaky noise that sounded like “Squeak, Squeak, Squeak!!! Oh Little Black Mingo, help me or I shall be drowned.” She got up and looked to see what was calling, and she saw a bush coming floating down the river with something wriggling and scrambling about in it, and as it came near she saw that it was a Mongoose that was in the bush. So she waded out as far as she could, and caught hold of the bush and pulled it in, and the poor Mongoose crawled up her arm on to her shoulder, and she carried him to shore.

When they got to shore the Mongoose shook himself, and Little Black Mingo wrung out her petticoat, and so they both very soon got dry.

The Mongoose then began to poke about for something to eat, and very soon he found the great big pile of Mugger’s eggs. “Oh, joy!” said he, “what’s this?”

“Those are Mugger’s eggs,” said Little Black Mingo.

“I’m not afraid of Muggers!” said the Mongoose; and he sat down and began to crack the eggs, and eat the little muggers as they came out. And he threw the shells into the water, so that the old Mugger should not see that any one had been eating them. But he was careless, and he left one eggshell on the edge, and he was hungry and he ate so many that the pile got much smaller, and when the old Mugger came back he saw at once that some one had been meddling with them.

So he ran to Little Black Mingo, and said, “How dare you eat my eggs?”

“Indeed, indeed I didn’t,” said Little Black Mingo.

“Then who could it have been?” said the Mugger, and he ran back to the eggs as fast as he could, and sure enough when he got back he found the Mongoose had eaten a whole lot more!!

Then he said to himself, “I must stay beside my eggs till they are hatched into little muggers, or the Mongoose will eat them all.” So he curled himself into a ring round the eggs and went to sleep.

But while he was asleep the Mongoose came to eat some more of the eggs, and ate as many as he wanted, and when the Mugger woke this time, oh! WHAT a rage he was in, for there were only six eggs left! He roared so loud that all the little muggers inside the shells gnashed their teeth, and tried to roar too.

Then he said, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll fetch Little Black Mingo’s big chatty and cover my eggs with that, then the Mongoose won’t be able to get at them.” So he swam across to the shore, and fetched the dhobi’s big chatty, and covered the eggs with it. “Now, you wicked little Mongoose, come and eat my eggs if you can,” said he, and he went off quite proud and happy.

By and by the Mongoose came back, and he was terribly disappointed when he found the eggs all covered with the big chatty.

So he ran off to Little Black Mingo, and asked her to help him, and Little Black Mingo came and took the big chatty off the eggs, and the Mongoose ate them every one.

“Now,” said he, “there will be no little muggers to make a feast for tomorrow.”

“No,” said Little Black Mingo, “but the Mugger will eat me all by himself I am afraid.”

“No he won’t,” said the Mongoose, “for we will sail away together in the big chatty before he comes back.”

So he climbed on to the edge of the chatty, and Little Black Mingo pushed the chatty out into the water, and then she clambered into it and paddled with her two hands as hard as she could, and the big chatty just sailed beautifully.

So they got across safely, and Little Black Mingo filled the chatty half full of water and took it on her head, and they went up the bank together.

But when the Mugger came back, and found only empty egg-shells he was fearfully angry. He roared and he raged, and he howled and he yelled, till the whole island shook, and his tears ran down his cheeks and pattered on the sand like rain.

So he started to chase Little Black Mingo and the Mongoose, and he swam across the river as fast as ever he could, and when he was half way across he saw them landing, and as he landed they hurried over the first ridge.

So he raced after them, but they ran, and just before he caught them they got into the house, and banged the door in his face. Then they shut all the windows, so he could not get in anywhere.

“All right,” said he, “you will have to come out some time, and then I will catch you both, and eat you up.”

So he hid behind the back of the house and waited.

Now Black Noggy was just coming home from the bazaar with a tin of kerosene on her head, and a box of matches in her hand.

And when he saw her the Mugger rushed out and gobbled her up, kerosene tin, matches and all!!!

When Black Noggy found herself in the Muggers’ dark inside, she wanted to see where she was, so she felt for the match-box and took out a match and lit it. But the Mugger’s teeth had made holes in the kerosene tin, so that the flame of the match caught the kerosene, and BANG!! the kerosene exploded, and blew the old Mugger and Black Noggy into little bits.

At the fearful noise Little Black Mingo and the Mongoose came running out, and there they found Black Noggy and the old Mugger all blown to bits.

So Little Black Mingo and the Mongoose got the nice little house for their very own, and there they lived happy ever after. And Little Black Mingo got the Mugger’s beard for her seat, and the Mongoose got Black Noggy’s handkerchief for his. But he was so wee he used to put it on the Mugger’s nose, and there they sat, and had their tea every evening.
THE END
 
THE GODS OF MARS by 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.
 
GODDESS OF MARS CONT

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.
 
GODDESS OF MARS CONT

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.
 
GODDESS OF MARS CONT

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.
 
GODDESS OF MARS CONT

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.
 
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