'And only this desert from which to look for subsistence?' asked Pan Dan Chee.
'There will be hills,' I told him. 'There will be deep little ravines where moisture lingers and things grow which we can eat; but there may be green men, and there will certainly be banths and other beasts of prey. Are you afraid, Pan Dan Chee?'
'Yes,' he said, 'but only for Llana of Gathol. She is a woman-it is no adventure for a woman. Perhaps she could not survive it.'
Llana of Gathol laughed. 'You do not know the women of Helium,' she said, 'and still less one in whose veins flows the blood of Dejah Thoris and John Carter. Perhaps you will learn before we have reached Gathol.' She stooped and stripped the harness and weapons of a dead Panar from his corpse and buckled them upon herself. The act was more eloquent than words.
'Now we are three good sword arms,' said Pan Dan Chee with a laugh, but we knew that he was not laughing at Llana of Gathol but from admiration of her.
And so we set out, the three of us, on that long trek toward far Gathol — Llana of Gathol and I, of one blood and two worlds, and Pan Dan Chee of still another blood and of an extinct world. We might have seemed ill assorted, but no three people could have been more in harmony with each other-at least at first.
For five days we saw no living thing. We subsisted entirely upon the milk of the mantalia plant, which grows apparently without water, distilling its plentiful supply of milk from the products of the soil, the slight moisture in the air, and the rays of the sun. A single plant of this species will give eight or ten quarts of milk a day. They are scattered across the dead sea bottoms as though by a beneficent Providence, giving both food and drink to man and beast.
My companions might still have died of thirst or starvation had I not been with them, for neither knew that the quite ordinary-looking plants which we occasionally passed carried in their stems and branches this life-giving fluid.
We rested in the middle of the day and slept during the middle portion of the nights, taking turns standing guard-a duty which Llana of Gathol insisted on sharing with us.
When we lay down to rest on the sixth night, Llana had the first watch; and as I had the second, I prepared to sleep at once. Pan Dan Chee sat up and talked with Llana.
As I dozed off, I heard him say, 'May I call you my princess?'
That, on Barsoom, is the equivalent of a proposal of marriage on Earth. I tried to shut my ears and go to sleep, but I could not but hear her reply.
'You have not fought for me yet,' she said, 'and no man may presume to claim a woman of Helium until he has proved his metal.'
'I have had no opportunity to fight for you,' he said.
'Then wait until you have,' she said, shortly; 'and now good-night.'
I thought she was a little too short with him. Pan Dan Chee is a nice fellow, and I was sure that he would give a good account of himself when the opportunity arose. She didn't have to treat him as though he were scum. But then, women have their own ways. As a rule they are unpleasant ways, but they seem the proper ways to win men; so I suppose they must be all right.
Pan Dan Chee walked off a few paces and lay down on the other side of Llana of Gathol. We always managed to keep her between us at all times for her greater protection.
I was awakened later on by a shout and a hideous roar. I leaped to my feet to see Llana of Gathol down on the ground with a huge banth on top of her, and at that instant Pan Dan Chee leaped full upon the back of the mighty carnivore.
It all happened so quickly that I can scarcely visualize it all. I saw Pan Dan Chee dragging at the great beast in an effort to pull it from Llana's body, and at the same he was plunging his dagger into its side. The banth was roaring hideously as it tried to fight off Pan Dan Chee and at the same time retain its hold upon Llana.
I sprang close in with my short-sword, but it was difficult to find an opening which did not endanger either Llana or Pan Dan Chee. It must have been a very amusing sight; as the four of us were threshing around on the ground, all mixed up, and the banth was roaring and Pan Dan Chee was cursing like a trooper when he wasn't trying to tell Llana of Gathol how much he loved her.
But at last I got an opening, and drove my short-sword into the heart of the banth. With a final scream and a convulsive shudder, the beast rolled over and lay still.
When I tried to lift Llana from the ground, she leaped to her feet. 'Pan Dan Chee!' she cried. 'Is he all right? Was he hurt?'
'Of course I'm all right,' said Pan Dan Chee; 'but you? How badly are you hurt?'
'I am not hurt at all. You kept the brute so busy it didn't have a chance to maul me.'
'Thanks be to my ancestors!' exclaimed Pan Dan Chee fervently. Suddenly he turned on her. 'Now,' he said, 'I have fought for you. What is your answer?'
Llana of Gathol shrugged her pretty shoulders. 'You have not fought a man,' she said, '-just a little banth.'
Well, I never did understand women.
BOOK 2. THE BLACK PIRATES OF BARSOOM
Chapter 1
In my former life on Earth I spent more time in the saddle than I did on foot, and since I have been here on the Planet of Barsoom I have spent much time in the saddle or on the swift fliers of the Navy of Helium; so naturally I did not look forward with any great amount of pleasure to walking fifteen hundred miles.
However, it had to be done; and when a thing has to be done the best plan is to get at it, stick to it, and get it over with as quickly as possible.
Gathol is southwest of Horz; but, having no compass and no landmarks, I went, as I discovered later, a little too far to the west. Had I not done so we might have been saved some very harrowing experiences. Although, if my past life is any criterion, we would have found plenty of other adventures.
We had covered some two thousand five hundred haads of the four thousand we had to travel, or at least as nearly as I could compute it, with a minimum of untoward incidents. On two occasions we had been attacked by banths but had managed to kill them before they could harm us; and we had been attacked by a band of wild calots, but fortunately we had met no human beings-of all the creatures of Barsoom the most dangerous. For here, outside of your own country or the countries of your allies, every man is your enemy and bent upon destroying you; nor is it strange upon a dying world the natural resources of which have dwindled almost to the vanishing point and even air and water are only barely sufficient to meet the requirements of the present population.
The vast stretches of dead sea bottom, covered with its ocher vegetation, which we traversed were broken only occasionally by low hills. Here in shaded ravines we sometimes found edible roots and tubers. But for the most part we subsisted upon the milk-like sap of the mantalia bush, which grows on the dead sea bottom, though in no great profusion.
We had tried to keep track of the days, and it was on the thirty-seventh day that we encountered really serious trouble. It was the fourth zode, which is roughly about one P.M. Earth time, that we saw in the distance and to our left what I instantly recognized as a caravan of green Martians.
As no fate can be worse than falling into the hands of these cruel monsters, we hurried on in the hope of crossing their path before we were discovered. We took advantage of what cover the sea bottom afforded us, which was very little; oftentimes compelling us to worm our way along on our bellies, an art which I had learned from the Apaches of Arizona. I was in the lead, when I came upon a human skeleton. It was crumbling to dust, an indication that it must have lain there for many years, for so low is the humidity on Mars that disintegration of bony
