had entered!
'The chests looked inviting. One of them would provide an excellent hiding place. It was just by the merest chance that the first one I opened was empty. I crept into it and lowered the lid above me. The rest you know.'
'And now you are coming out of the pits,' I said, as we started up a ramp at the top of which I could see daylight.
'In a few moments,' said Kam Han Tor, 'we shall be looking upon the broad waters of Throxeus.'
I shook my head. 'Do not be too disappointed,' I said.
'Are you and your friend in league to perpetrate a hoax upon me?' demanded Kan Han Tor. 'Only yesterday I saw the ships of the fleet lying at anchor off the quay. Do you think me a fool, that you tell me there is no longer any ocean where an ocean was yesterday, where it has been since the creation of Barsoom? Oceans do not disappear overnight, my friend.'
There was a murmur of approval from those of the fine company of nobles and their women who were within earshot. They were loath to believe what they did not wish to believe and what, I realized, must have seemed an insult to their intelligence.
Put yourself in their place. Perhaps you live in San Francisco. You go to bed one night. When you awaken, a total stranger tells you that the Pacific Ocean has dried up and that you may walk to Honolulu or Guam or the Philippines. I'm quite sure that you wouldn't believe him.
As we came up into the broad avenue that led to the ancient sea front of Horz, that assembly of gorgeously trapped men and women looked about them in dumbfounded astonishment upon the crumbling ruins of their once proud city.
'Where are the people?' demanded one. 'Why is the Avenue of Jeddaks deserted?'
'And the palace of the jeddak!' exclaimed another. 'There are no guards.'
'There is no one!' gasped a woman.
No one commented, as they pushed on eagerly toward the quay. Before they got there they were already straining their eyes out across a barren desert of dead sea bottom where once the waters of Throxeus had rolled.
In silence they continued on to the Avenue of Quays. They simply could not believe the testimony of their own eyes. I cannot recall ever having felt sorrier for any of my fellow men than I did at that moment for these poor people.
'It is gone,' said Kam Han Tor in a scarcely audible whisper.
A woman sobbed. A warrior drew his dagger and plunged it into his own heart.
'And a our people are gone,' said Kam Han Tor. 'Our very world is gone.'
They stood there looking out across that desert waste; behind them a dead city that, in their last yesterday, had teemed with life and youth and energy.
And then a strange thing happened. Before my eyes, Kam Han Tor commenced to shrink and crumble. He literally disintegrated, he and the leather of his harness. His weapons clattered to the pavement and lay there in a little pile of dust that had been Kam Han Tor, the brother of a jeddak.
Llana of Gathol pressed close to me and seized my arm. 'It is horrible!' she whispered. 'Look! Look at the others!'
I looked about me. Singly, in groups of two or three, the men and women of ancient Horz were returning to the dust from which they had sprung- 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust!'
'For all the ages that they have lain in the pits of Horz,' said Pan Dan Chee, 'this disintegration has been going slowly on. Only Lum Tar O's obscene powers gave them a semblance of life. With that removed final dissolution came quickly.'
'That must be the explanation,' I said. 'It is well that it is so, for these people never could have found happiness in the Barsoom of today- a dying world, so unlike the glorious world of Barsoom in the full flush of her prime, with her five oceans, her great cities, her happy, prosperous peoples, who, if history speaks the truth, had finally overthrown all the warlords and war mongers and established peace from pole to pole.'
'No,' said Llana of Gathol, 'they could never have been happy again. Did you notice what handsome people they were? and the color of their skins was the same as yours, John Carter. But for their blond hair they might have been from your own Earth.'
'There are many blond people on Earth,' I told her. 'Maybe, after all the races of Earth have intermarried for many ages, we shall develop a race of red men, as has Barsoom. Who knows?'
Pan Dan Chee was standing looking adoringly at Llana of Gathol. He was so obvious that it was almost painful, and I could see that it annoyed Llana even while it pleased her.
'Come,' I said. 'Nothing is to be gained by standing here. My flier is in a courtyard nearby. It will carry three. You will come with me, Pan Dan Chee? I can assure you a welcome in Helium and a post of some nature in the army of the jeddak.'
Pan Dan Chee shook his head. 'I must go back to the citadel,' he said.
'To Ho Ran Kim and death,' I reminded him.
'Yes, to Ho Ran Kim and death,' he said.
'Don't be a fool, Pan Dan Chee,' I said. 'You have acquitted yourself honorably. You cannot kill me, and I know you would not kill Llana of Gathol. We shall go away, carrying the secret of the forgotten people of Horz with us, no matter what you do; but you must know that neither of us would use our knowledge to bring harm to your people. Why then go back to your death uselessly? Come with us.'
He looked straight into the eyes of Llana of Gathol. 'Is it your wish that I come with you?' he asked.
'If the alternative means your death,' she replied; 'then it is my wish that you come with us.'
A wry smile twisted Pan Dan Chee's lip, but evidently he saw a ray of hope in her noncommittal answer, for he said to me, 'I thank you, John Carter. I will go with you. My sword is yours, always.'
Chapter 13
I had no difficulty in locating the courtyard where I had landed and left my flier. As we approached it, I saw a number of dead men lying in the avenue. They were sprawled in the grotesque postures of death. Some of them were split wide open from their crowns to their bellies. 'The work of green men,' I said.
'These were the men of Hin Abtol,' said Llana of Gathol.
We counted seventeen corpses before we reached the entrance to the courtyard.
When I looked in, I stopped, appalled-my flier was not there; but five more dead Panars lay near where it had stood.
'It is gone,' I said.
'Hin Abtol,' said Llana of Gathol. 'The coward abandoned his men and fled in your flier. Only two of his warriors succeeded in accompanying him.'
'Perhaps he would have been a fool to remain,' I said. 'He would only have met the same death that they met.'
'In like circumstances, John Carter would have been a fool, then,' she shot back.
Perhaps I would, for the truth of the matter is that I like to fight. I suppose it is all wrong, but I cannot help it. Fighting has been my profession during all the life that I can recall. I fought all during the Civil War in the Confederate Army. I fought in other wars before that. I will not bore you with my autobiography. Suffice it to say that I have always been fighting. I do not know how old I am. I recall no childhood. I have always appeared to be about thirty years old. I still do. I do not know from whence I came, nor if I were born of woman as are other men. I have, so far as I know, simply always been.
Perhaps I am the materialization of some long dead warrior of another age. Who knows? That might explain my ability to cross the cold, dark void of space which separates Earth from Mars. I do not know.
Pan Dan Chee broke the spell of my reverie. 'What now?' he asked.
'A long walk,' I said. 'It is fully four thousand haads from here to Gathol, the nearest friendly city.' That would be the equivalent of fifteen hundred miles-a very long walk.
