The thought galled me, it hurt my pride, and forthwith I determined that if I could not chance dying to save myself, I might at least chance it for a woman of my own race, and always in the back of my head was the thought that perhaps the object of my solicitude might, indeed, be the woman I loved.
Darkness had fallen as I pressed my ear again to the trap-door. All was silent below, so that presently I became assured that the creature had departed. Perhaps he was lying in wait for me further down; but what of that? I must face him eventually if he elected to remain. I loosened my pistol in its holster and was upon the point of slipping the bar that secured the door when I distinctly heard the beast directly beneath me.
For an instant I paused. What was the use? It meant certain death to raise that door, and in what way might I be profiting either myself or the poor captive if I gave my life thus uselessly? But there was an alternative—one that I had been planning to adopt in case of necessity from the moment that I had first examined the exterior construction of the tower. It offered a slender chance of escape from my predicament, and even a very slender chance was better than what would confront me should I raise the trap-door.
I stepped to one of the windows of the tower and looked down upon the city. Neither moon was in the sky; I could see nothing. Towards the interior of the city I heard the squealing of thoats. There would the camp of the green men be located. Thus by the squealing of their vicious mounts would I be guided to it. Again a hunting banth roared in the hills. I sat upon the sill and swung both legs across, and then turning on my belly slipped silently over the edge until I hung only by my hands. Groping with my sandalled toes, I felt for a foothold upon the deep-cut carvings of the tower’s face. Above me was a blue-black void shot with stars; below me a blank and empty void. It might have been a thousand sofads to the roof below me, or it might have been one; but though I could see nothing I knew that it was one hundred and fifty and that at the bottom lay death if a foot or a hand slipped.
In daylight the sculpturing had seemed large and deep and bold, but by night how different! My toes seemed to find but hollow scratches in a smooth surface of polished stone. My arms and fingers were tiring. I must find a foothold or fall, and then, when hope seemed gone, the toe of my right sandal slipped into a horizontal groove and an instant later my left found a hold.
Flattened against the sheer wall of the tower I lay there resting my tired fingers and arms for a moment, and when I felt that they would bear my weight again I sought for hand holds. Thus painfully, perilously, monotonously, I descended inch by inch. I avoided the windows, which naturally greatly increased the difficulty and danger of my descent; yet I did not care to pass directly in front of them for fear that by chance the ape might have descended from the summit of the ladder and would see me.
I cannot recall that ever in my life I felt more alone than I did that night as I was descending the ancient beacon-tower of that deserted city, for not even hope was with me. So precarious were my holds upon the rough stone that my fingers were soon numb and exhausted. How they clung at all to those shallow cuts I do not know. The only redeeming feature of the descent was the darkness, and a hundred times I blessed my first ancestors that I could not see the dizzy depths below me; but on the other hand it was so dark that I could not tell how far I had descended; nor did I dare to look up where the summit of the tower must have been silhouetted against the starlit sky for fear that in doing so I should lose my balance and be precipitated to the courtyard or the roof below. The air of Barsoom is thin; it does not greatly diffuse the starlight, and so, while the heavens above were shot with brilliant points of light, the ground beneath was obliterated in darkness.
Yet I must have been nearer the roof than I thought when that happened which I had been assiduously endeavouring to prevent—the scabbard of my long sword pattered noisily against the face of the tower. In the darkness and the silence it seemed a veritable din, but, however exaggerated it might appear to me, I knew that it was sufficient to reach the ears of the great ape in the tower. Whether a suggestion of its import would occur to him I could not guess—I could only hope that he would be too dull to connect it with me or my escape.
But I was not to be left long in doubt, for almost immediately afterwards a sound came from the interior of the tower that sounded to my overwrought nerves like a heavy body rapidly descending a ladder. I realize now that imagination might easily have construed utter silence into such a sound, since I had been listening so intently for that very thing that I might easily have worked myself into such a state of nervous apprehension that almost any sort of an hallucination was possible.
With redoubled speed and with a measure of recklessness that was almost suicidal, I hastened my descent and an instant later I felt the solid roof beneath my feet.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was destined to be but a short sigh and but brief relief, for almost instantly I was made aware that the sound from the interior of the tower had been no hallucination as the huge bulk of a great white ape loomed suddenly from a doorway not a dozen paces from me.
As he charged me he gave forth no sound. Evidently he had not held his solitary vigil this long with any intention of sharing his feast with another. He would dispatch me in silence, and with similar intent I drew my long sword, rather than my pistol, to meet his savage charge.
What a puny, futile thing I must have appeared confronting that towering mountain of bestial ferocity!
Thanks be to a thousand fighting ancestors that I wielded a long sword with swiftness and with strength: otherwise I must have been gathered into that savage embrace in the brute’s first charge. Four powerful hands were reached out to seize me, but I swung my long sword in a terrific cut that severed one of them cleanly at the wrist, and at the same instant I leaped quickly to one side, and as the beast rushed past me, carried onward by its momentum, I ran my blade deep into its body. With a savage scream of rage and pain it sought to turn upon me, but its foot slipped upon its own dismembered hand and it stumbled awkwardly on, trying to regain its equilibrium, but that it never accomplished, and still stumbling grotesquely, it lunged over the edge of the roof to the courtyard below.
Fearing that the beast’s scream might attract others of its kind to the roof, I ran swiftly to the north edge of the building, where I had noted from the tower earlier in the afternoon a series of lower buildings adjoining, over the roofs of which I might possibly accomplish my descent to the street level.
Cold Cluros was rising above the distant horizon, shedding his pale light upon the city so that I could plainly see the roofs below me as I came to the north edge of the building. It was a long drop, but there was no safe alternative, since it was quite probable that should I attempt to descend through the building, I would meet other members of the ape’s herd who had been attracted by the scream of their fellow.
Slipping over the edge of the roof I hung an instant by my hands and then dropped. The distance was about two ads, but I alighted safely and without injury. Upon your own planet, with its larger bulk and greater gravity, I presume that a fall of that distance might be serious, but not so, necessarily, upon Barsoom. From this roof I had a short drop to the next, and from that I leaped to a low wall and thence to the ground below.
Had it not been for the fleeting glimpse of the girl captive that I had caught just at sunset, I should have set out directly for the hills west of the town, banth or no banth, but now I felt strongly upon me a certain moral obligation to make the best efforts that I could for succouring the poor unfortunate that had fallen into the clutches of these cruellest of creatures.
Keeping well within the shadows of the buildings I moved stealthily towards the central plaza of the city, from which direction I had heard the squealing of the thoats.
The plaza was a full haad from the water-front and I was compelled to cross several intersecting avenues as I cautiously made my way towards it, guided by an occasional squeal from the thoats quartered in some deserted palace
courtyard.
I reached the plaza in safety, confident that I had not been observed.
Upon the opposite side I saw light within one of the great buildings that faced it, but I dared not cross the open space in the moonlight, and so, still clinging to the shadows, I moved to the far end of the quadrangle where Cluros cast his densest shadows, and thus at last I won to the building in which the green men were quartered. Directly before me was a low window that must have opened into a room adjoining the one in which the warriors were congregated. Listening intently I heard nothing within the chamber, and slipping a leg over the sill I entered the dark interior with the utmost stealth.
Tiptoeing across the room to find a door through which I might look into the adjoining chamber, I was suddenly arrested as my foot touched a soft body, and I froze into rigidity, my hand upon my long sword, as the body moved.
chapter IV
TAVIA
THERE ARE OCCASIONS in the life of every man when he becomes impressed by the evidence of the existence of an extraneous power which guides his acts, which is sometimes described as the hand of providence, or is again explained on the hypothesis of a sixth sense which transports to the part of our brain that controls our actions, perceptions of which we are not objectively aware; but, account for it as one may, the fact remains that as I stood there that night in the dark chamber of the ancient palace of the deserted city I hesitated to thrust my sword into the soft body moving at my feet. This might after all have been the most reasonable and logical course for me to pursue. Instead I pressed my swordpoint firmly against yielding flesh and whispered a single word: “Silence!”
A thousand times since then have I given thanks to my first ancestors that I did not follow my natural impulse, for, in response to my admonition, a voice whispered: “Do not thrust, red man; I am of your own race and a prisoner,” and the voice was that of a girl.
Instantly I withdrew my blade and knelt beside her. “If you have come to help me, cut my bonds,” she said, “and be quick, for they will soon return for me.”
Feeling rapidly over her body I found that her wrists and ankles were secured with leather thongs, and drawing my dagger I quickly severed these.
“Are you alone?” I asked as I helped her to her feet.
“Yes,” she replied. “In the next room they are playing for me to decide to which one I shall belong.” At that moment there came the clank of side-arms from the adjoining room. “They are coming,” she said. “They must not find us here.”
Taking her by the hand I moved to the window through which I had entered the apartment, but fortunately I reconnoitred before stepping out into the avenue, and it was well for us that I did so, for as I looked to the right along the face of the building, I saw a green Martian warrior emerging from the main entrance. Evidently it had been the rattling of his side-arms that we had heard as he moved across the adjoining apartment to the doorway.
“Is there another exit from this room?” I asked in a low whisper.
“Yes,” she replied. “Opposite this window there is a doorway leading into a corridor. It was open when they brought me in, but they closed it.”
“We shall be better off inside the building than out for a while at least,” I said. “Come!” And together we crossed the apartment, groping along the wall for the door, which I soon located. With the utmost care I drew it ajar, fearing that its ancient hinges might betray us by their complaining. Beyond the doorway lay a corridor dark as the depths of Omean, and into this I drew the girl, closing the door silently behind us. Groping our way to the right away from the apartment occupied by the green warriors, we moved slowly through a black void until presently we saw just ahead a faint light, which investigation revealed as coming through the open doorway of an apartment that faced upon the central courtyard of the edifice. I was about to pass this doorway and seek a hiding-place further within the remote interior of the building when my attention was attracted by the squealing of a thoat in the courtyard beyond the apartment we were passing.
From earliest boyhood I have had a great deal of experience with the small breed of thoats used as saddle animals by the men of my race, and while I was visiting Tars Tarkas of Thark I became quite familiar with the methods employed by the green men in controlling their own huge vicious beasts.
For travel over the surface of the ground the thoat compares to other methods of land transportation as the one-man scout flier does to all other ships of the air in aerial navigation. He is at once the swiftest and the most dangerous, so that, faced as I was with a problem of land transportation, it was only natural that the squeal of the thoat should suggest a plan to my mind.
“Why do you hesitate?” asked the girl. “We cannot escape in that direction since we cannot cross the courtyard.”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “I believe that in this direction may lie our surest avenue of escape.”
“But their thoats are penned in the courtyard,” she remonstrated, “and green warriors are never far from their thoats.”
“It is because the thoats are there that I wish to investigate the courtyard,” I replied.
“The moment they catch our scent,” she said, “they will raise a disturbance that will attract the attention of their masters and we shall immediately be discovered and captured.”
“Perhaps,” I said; “but if my plan succeeds it will be well worth the risk, but if you are very much afraid I will abandon it.”
“No,” she said, “it is not for me to choose or direct. You have been generous enough to help me and I may only follow where you lead, but if I knew your plan perhaps I might follow more intelligently.”
“Certainly,” I said; “it is very simple. There are thoats. We shall take one of them and ride away. It will be much easier than walking and our chances of escape will be considerably greater; at the same time we shall leave the courtyard gates open, hoping that the other thoats will follow us out, leaving their masters unable to pursue us.”
“It is a mad plan,” said the girl, “but it is a brave one. If we are discovered, there will be fighting, and I am unarmed. Give me your short sword, warrior, that we may at least make the best account of ourselves that is possible.”
I unsnapped the scabbard of my short sword from my harness and attached it to hers at her left hip, and, as I touched her body in doing so, I could not but note that there was no sign of trembling such as there would have been had she been affected by fright or excitement. She seemed perfectly cool and collected and her tone of voice was most reassuring to me. That she was not Sanoma Tora I had known when she had first spoken in the darkness of the room in which I had stumbled upon her, and while I had been keenly disappointed, I was still determined to do the best that I could to assist in the escape of the stranger, although I was confident that her presence might greatly delay and embarrass me, while it subjected me to far greater danger than would have fallen to the lot of a warrior travelling alone. It was, therefore, reassuring to find that my unwelcome companion would not prove entirely helpless.
“I trust you will not have to use it,” I said as I finished hooking my short sword to her harness.
“You will find,” she said, “that if necessity arises I can use it.”
“Good,” I said. “Now follow me and keep close to me.”
A careful survey of the courtyard from the window of the huge chamber overlooking it revealed about twenty huge thoats, but no green warriors, evidence that they felt perfectly secure against enemies.
The thoats were congregated in the far end of the courtyard; a few of them had lain down for the night, but the balance were moving restlessly about as is their habit. Across the courtyard from us and at the same end stood a pair of massive gates. As far as I could determine they barred the only opening into the courtyard large enough to admit a thoat, and I assumed that beyond them lay an alley leading to one of the avenues near by.
To reach the gates unobserved by the thoats was the first step in my plan, an
d the better to do this I decided to seek an apartment near the gate, on either side of which I saw windows similar to that from which we were looking. Therefore, motioning my companion to follow me, I returned to the corridor, and again groping through the darkness we made our way along it. In the third apartment which I explored I found a window letting into the courtyard close beside the gate. And in the wall which ran at angles to that in which the window was set I found a doorway that opened into a large vaulted corridor upon the opposite side of the gate. This discovery greatly encouraged me, since it harmonized perfectly with the plan I had in mind, at the same time reducing the risk which my companion must run in the attempted adventure of escape.
“Remain here,” I said to her, placing her just behind the gate. “If my plan is successful I shall ride into this corridor upon one of the thoats, and as I do so you must be ready to seize my hand and mount behind me. If I am discovered and fail I shall cry out ‘For Helium!’ and that must be your signal to escape as best you may.”
She laid her hand upon my arm. “Let me go into the courtyard with you,” she begged. “Two swords are better than one.”
“No,” I said. “Alone I have a better chance of handling the thoats than if their attention is distracted by another.”
“Very well,” she said, and with that I left her, and, reentering the chamber, went directly to the window. For a moment I reconnoitred the interior of the courtyard, and finding conditions unchanged, I slipped stealthily through the window and edged slowly towards the gate. Cautiously I examined the latch, and discovering it easy to manipulate, I was soon silently pushing one of the gates back upon its hinges. When it was opened sufficiently wide to permit the passage of a thoat, I turned my attention to the beasts within the enclosure. Practically untamed, these savage creatures are as wild as their uncaptured fellows of the remote sea bottoms, and, being controlled solely by telepathic means, they are amenable only to the suggestion of the more powerful minds of their masters, and even so it requires considerable skill to dominate them.
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