The Plant Men

: The Gods Of Mars

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 arch 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.