The Depths Of Omean

: The Gods Of Mars

Now I realized why the black pirate had kept me engrossed with his

strange tale. For miles he had sensed the approach of succour, and but

for that single tell-tale glance the battleship would have been

directly above us in another moment, and the boarding party which was

doubtless even now swinging in their harness from the ship's keel,

would have swarmed our deck, placing my rising hope of escape in sudden

and total
clipse.



I was too old a hand in aerial warfare to be at a loss now for the

right manoeuvre. Simultaneously I reversed the engines and dropped the

little vessel a sheer hundred feet.



Above my head I could see the dangling forms of the boarding party as

the battleship raced over us. Then I rose at a sharp angle, throwing

my speed lever to its last notch.



Like a bolt from a crossbow my splendid craft shot its steel prow

straight at the whirring propellers of the giant above us. If I could

but touch them the huge bulk would be disabled for hours and escape

once more possible.



At the same instant the sun shot above the horizon, disclosing a

hundred grim, black faces peering over the stern of the battleship upon

us.



At sight of us a shout of rage went up from a hundred throats. Orders

were shouted, but it was too late to save the giant propellers, and

with a crash we rammed them.



Instantly with the shock of impact I reversed my engine, but my prow

was wedged in the hole it had made in the battleship's stern. Only a

second I hung there before tearing away, but that second was amply long

to swarm my deck with black devils.



There was no fight. In the first place there was no room to fight. We

were simply submerged by numbers. Then as swords menaced me a command

from Xodar stayed the hands of his fellows.



"Secure them," he said, "but do not injure them."



Several of the pirates already had released Xodar. He now personally

attended to my disarming and saw that I was properly bound. At least

he thought that the binding was secure. It would have been had I been

a Martian, but I had to smile at the puny strands that confined my

wrists. When the time came I could snap them as they had been cotton

string.



The girl they bound also, and then they fastened us together. In the

meantime they had brought our craft alongside the disabled battleship,

and soon we were transported to the latter's deck.



Fully a thousand black men manned the great engine of destruction. Her

decks were crowded with them as they pressed forward as far as

discipline would permit to get a glimpse of their captives.



The girl's beauty elicited many brutal comments and vulgar jests. It

was evident that these self-thought supermen were far inferior to the

red men of Barsoom in refinement and in chivalry.



My close-cropped black hair and thern complexion were the subjects of

much comment. When Xodar told his fellow nobles of my fighting ability

and strange origin they crowded about me with numerous questions.



The fact that I wore the harness and metal of a thern who had been

killed by a member of my party convinced them that I was an enemy of

their hereditary foes, and placed me on a better footing in their

estimation.



Without exception the blacks were handsome men, and well built. The

officers were conspicuous through the wondrous magnificence of their

resplendent trappings. Many harnesses were so encrusted with gold,

platinum, silver and precious stones as to entirely hide the leather

beneath.



The harness of the commanding officer was a solid mass of diamonds.

Against the ebony background of his skin they blazed out with a

peculiarly accentuated effulgence. The whole scene was enchanting.

The handsome men; the barbaric splendour of the accoutrements; the

polished skeel wood of the deck; the gloriously grained sorapus of the

cabins, inlaid with priceless jewels and precious metals in intricate

and beautiful design; the burnished gold of hand rails; the shining

metal of the guns.



Phaidor and I were taken below decks, where, still fast bound, we were

thrown into a small compartment which contained a single port-hole. As

our escort left us they barred the door behind them.



We could hear the men working on the broken propellers, and from the

port-hole we could see that the vessel was drifting lazily toward the

south.



For some time neither of us spoke. Each was occupied with his own

thoughts. For my part I was wondering as to the fate of Tars Tarkas

and the girl, Thuvia.



Even if they succeeded in eluding pursuit they must eventually fall

into the hands of either red men or green, and as fugitives from the

Valley Dor they could look for but little else than a swift and

terrible death.



How I wished that I might have accompanied them. It seemed to me that

I could not fail to impress upon the intelligent red men of Barsoom the

wicked deception that a cruel and senseless superstition had foisted

upon them.



Tardos Mors would believe me. Of that I was positive. And that he

would have the courage of his convictions my knowledge of his character

assured me. Dejah Thoris would believe me. Not a doubt as to that

entered my head. Then there were a thousand of my red and green

warrior friends whom I knew would face eternal damnation gladly for my

sake. Like Tars Tarkas, where I led they would follow.



My only danger lay in that should I ever escape the black pirates it

might be to fall into the hands of unfriendly red or green men. Then

it would mean short shrift for me.



Well, there seemed little to worry about on that score, for the

likelihood of my ever escaping the blacks was extremely remote.



The girl and I were linked together by a rope which permitted us to

move only about three or four feet from each other. When we had

entered the compartment we had seated ourselves upon a low bench

beneath the porthole. The bench was the only furniture of the room.

It was of sorapus wood. The floor, ceiling and walls were of

carborundum aluminum, a light, impenetrable composition extensively

utilized in the construction of Martian fighting ships.



As I had sat meditating upon the future my eyes had been riveted upon

the port-hole which was just level with them as I sat. Suddenly I

looked toward Phaidor. She was regarding me with a strange expression

I had not before seen upon her face. She was very beautiful then.



Instantly her white lids veiled her eyes, and I thought I discovered a

delicate flush tingeing her cheek. Evidently she was embarrassed at

having been detected in the act of staring at a lesser creature, I

thought.



"Do you find the study of the lower orders interesting?" I asked,

laughing.



She looked up again with a nervous but relieved little laugh.



"Oh very," she said, "especially when they have such excellent

profiles."



It was my turn to flush, but I did not. I felt that she was poking fun

at me, and I admired a brave heart that could look for humour on the

road to death, and so I laughed with her.



"Do you know where we are going?" she said.



"To solve the mystery of the eternal hereafter, I imagine," I replied.



"I am going to a worse fate than that," she said, with a little shudder.



"What do you mean?"



"I can only guess," she replied, "since no thern damsel of all the

millions that have been stolen away by black pirates during the ages

they have raided our domains has ever returned to narrate her

experiences among them. That they never take a man prisoner lends

strength to the belief that the fate of the girls they steal is worse

than death."



"Is it not a just retribution?" I could not help but ask.



"What do you mean?"



"Do not the therns themselves do likewise with the poor creatures who

take the voluntary pilgrimage down the River of Mystery? Was not

Thuvia for fifteen years a plaything and a slave? Is it less than just

that you should suffer as you have caused others to suffer?"



"You do not understand," she replied. "We therns are a holy race. It

is an honour to a lesser creature to be a slave among us. Did we not

occasionally save a few of the lower orders that stupidly float down an

unknown river to an unknown end all would become the prey of the plant

men and the apes."



"But do you not by every means encourage the superstition among those

of the outside world?" I argued. "That is the wickedest of your deeds.

Can you tell me why you foster the cruel deception?"



"All life on Barsoom," she said, "is created solely for the support of

the race of therns. How else could we live did the outer world not

furnish our labour and our food? Think you that a thern would demean

himself by labour?"



"It is true then that you eat human flesh?" I asked in horror.



She looked at me in pitying commiseration for my ignorance.



"Truly we eat the flesh of the lower orders. Do not you also?"



"The flesh of beasts, yes," I replied, "but not the flesh of man."



"As man may eat of the flesh of beasts, so may gods eat of the flesh of

man. The Holy Therns are the gods of Barsoom."



I was disgusted and I imagine that I showed it.



"You are an unbeliever now," she continued gently, "but should we be

fortunate enough to escape the clutches of the black pirates and come

again to the court of Matai Shang I think that we shall find an

argument to convince you of the error of your ways. And--," she

hesitated, "perhaps we shall find a way to keep you as--as--one of us."



Again her eyes dropped to the floor, and a faint colour suffused her

cheek. I could not understand her meaning; nor did I for a long time.

Dejah Thoris was wont to say that in some things I was a veritable

simpleton, and I guess that she was right.



"I fear that I would ill requite your father's hospitality," I

answered, "since the first thing that I should do were I a thern would

be to set an armed guard at the mouth of the River Iss to escort the

poor deluded voyagers back to the outer world. Also should I devote my

life to the extermination of the hideous plant men and their horrible

companions, the great white apes."



She looked at me really horror struck.



"No, no," she cried, "you must not say such terribly sacrilegious

things--you must not even think them. Should they ever guess that you

entertained such frightful thoughts, should we chance to regain the

temples of the therns, they would mete out a frightful death to you.

Not even my--my--" Again she flushed, and started over. "Not even I

could save you."



I said no more. Evidently it was useless. She was even more steeped

in superstition than the Martians of the outer world. They only

worshipped a beautiful hope for a life of love and peace and happiness

in the hereafter. The therns worshipped the hideous plant men and the

apes, or at least they reverenced them as the abodes of the departed

spirits of their own dead.



At this point the door of our prison opened to admit Xodar.



He smiled pleasantly at me, and when he smiled his expression was

kindly--anything but cruel or vindictive.



"Since you cannot escape under any circumstances," he said, "I cannot

see the necessity for keeping you confined below. I will cut your

bonds and you may come on deck. You will witness something very

interesting, and as you never shall return to the outer world it will

do no harm to permit you to see it. You will see what no other than

the First Born and their slaves know the existence of--the subterranean

entrance to the Holy Land, to the real heaven of Barsoom.



"It will be an excellent lesson for this daughter of the therns," he

added, "for she shall see the Temple of Issus, and Issus, perchance,

shall embrace her."



Phaidor's head went high.



"What blasphemy is this, dog of a pirate?" she cried. "Issus would

wipe out your entire breed an' you ever came within sight of her

temple."



"You have much to learn, thern," replied Xodar, with an ugly smile,

"nor do I envy you the manner in which you will learn it."



As we came on deck I saw to my surprise that the vessel was passing

over a great field of snow and ice. As far as the eye could reach in

any direction naught else was visible.



There could be but one solution to the mystery. We were above the

south polar ice cap. Only at the poles of Mars is there ice or snow

upon the planet. No sign of life appeared below us. Evidently we were

too far south even for the great fur-bearing animals which the Martians

so delight in hunting.



Xodar was at my side as I stood looking out over the ship's rail.



"What course?" I asked him.



"A little west of south," he replied. "You will see the Otz Valley

directly. We shall skirt it for a few hundred miles."



"The Otz Valley!" I exclaimed; "but, man, is not there where lie the

domains of the therns from which I but just escaped?"



"Yes," answered Xodar. "You crossed this ice field last night in the

long chase that you led us. The Otz Valley lies in a mighty depression

at the south pole. It is sunk thousands of feet below the level of the

surrounding country, like a great round bowl. A hundred miles from its

northern boundary rise the Otz Mountains which circle the inner Valley

of Dor, in the exact centre of which lies the Lost Sea of Korus. On

the shore of this sea stands the Golden Temple of Issus in the Land of

the First Born. It is there that we are bound."



As I looked I commenced to realize why it was that in all the ages only

one had escaped from the Valley Dor. My only wonder was that even the

one had been successful. To cross this frozen, wind-swept waste of

bleak ice alone and on foot would be impossible.



"Only by air boat could the journey be made," I finished aloud.



"It was thus that one did escape the therns in bygone times; but none

has ever escaped the First Born," said Xodar, with a touch of pride in

his voice.



We had now reached the southernmost extremity of the great ice barrier.

It ended abruptly in a sheer wall thousands of feet high at the base of

which stretched a level valley, broken here and there by low rolling

hills and little clumps of forest, and with tiny rivers formed by the

melting of the ice barrier at its base.



Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep canyon-like rift

stretching from the ice wall on the north across the valley as far as

the eye could reach. "That is the bed of the River Iss," said Xodar.

"It runs far beneath the ice field, and below the level of the Valley

Otz, but its canyon is open here."



Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing it out

to Xodar asked him what it might be.



"It is a village of lost souls," he answered, laughing. "This strip

between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground.

Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and,

scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in the valley.

Also a slave now and then escapes from the therns and makes his way

hither.



"They do not attempt to recapture such, since there is no escape from

this outer valley, and as a matter of fact they fear the patrolling

cruisers of the First Born too much to venture from their own domains.



"The poor creatures of this outer valley are not molested by us since

they have nothing that we desire, nor are they numerically strong

enough to give us an interesting fight--so we too leave them alone.



"There are several villages of them, but they have increased in numbers

but little in many years since they are always warring among

themselves."



Now we swung a little north of west, leaving the valley of lost souls,

and shortly I discerned over our starboard bow what appeared to be a

black mountain rising from the desolate waste of ice. It was not high

and seemed to have a flat top.



Xodar had left us to attend to some duty on the vessel, and Phaidor and

I stood alone beside the rail. The girl had not once spoken since we

had been brought to the deck.



"Is what he has been telling me true?" I asked her.



"In part, yes," she answered. "That about the outer valley is true,

but what he says of the location of the Temple of Issus in the centre

of his country is false. If it is not false--" she hesitated. "Oh it

cannot be true, it cannot be true. For if it were true then for

countless ages have my people gone to torture and ignominious death at

the hands of their cruel enemies, instead of to the beautiful Life

Eternal that we have been taught to believe Issus holds for us."



"As the lesser Barsoomians of the outer world have been lured by you to

the terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the therns themselves have

been lured by the First Born to an equally horrid fate," I suggested.

"It would be a stern and awful retribution, Phaidor; but a just one."



"I cannot believe it," she said.



"We shall see," I answered, and then we fell silent again for we were

rapidly approaching the black mountains, which in some indefinable way

seemed linked with the answer to our problem.



As we neared the dark, truncated cone the vessel's speed was diminished

until we barely moved. Then we topped the crest of the mountain and

below us I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular well, the bottom of

which was lost in inky blackness.



The diameter of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The walls

were smooth and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic rock.



For a moment the vessel hovered motionless directly above the centre of

the gaping void, then slowly she began to settle into the black chasm.

Lower and lower she sank until as darkness enveloped us her lights were

thrown on and in the dim halo of her own radiance the monster

battleship dropped on and on down into what seemed to me must be the

very bowels of Barsoom.



For quite half an hour we descended and then the shaft terminated

abruptly in the dome of a mighty subterranean world. Below us rose and

fell the billows of a buried sea. A phosphorescent radiance

illuminated the scene. Thousands of ships dotted the bosom of the

ocean. Little islands rose here and there to support the strange and

colourless vegetation of this strange world.



Slowly and with majestic grace the battleship dropped until she rested

on the water. Her great propellers had been drawn and housed during

our descent of the shaft and in their place had been run out the

smaller but more powerful water propellers. As these commenced to

revolve the ship took up its journey once more, riding the new element

as buoyantly and as safely as she had the air.



Phaidor and I were dumbfounded. Neither had either heard or dreamed

that such a world existed beneath the surface of Barsoom.



Nearly all the vessels we saw were war craft. There were a few

lighters and barges, but none of the great merchantmen such as ply the

upper air between the cities of the outer world.



"Here is the harbour of the navy of the First Born," said a voice

behind us, and turning we saw Xodar watching us with an amused smile on

his lips.



"This sea," he continued, "is larger than Korus. It receives the

waters of the lesser sea above it. To keep it from filling above a

certain level we have four great pumping stations that force the

oversupply back into the reservoirs far north from which the red men

draw the water which irrigates their farm lands."



A new light burst on me with this explanation. The red men had always

considered it a miracle that caused great columns of water to spurt

from the solid rock of their reservoir sides to increase the supply of

the precious liquid which is so scarce in the outer world of Mars.



Never had their learned men been able to fathom the secret of the

source of this enormous volume of water. As ages passed they had

simply come to accept it as a matter of course and ceased to question

its origin.



We passed several islands on which were strangely shaped circular

buildings, apparently roofless, and pierced midway between the ground

and their tops with small, heavily barred windows. They bore the

earmarks of prisons, which were further accentuated by the armed guards

who squatted on low benches without, or patrolled the short beach lines.



Few of these islets contained over an acre of ground, but presently we

sighted a much larger one directly ahead. This proved to be our

destination, and the great ship was soon made fast against the steep

shore.



Xodar signalled us to follow him and with a half-dozen officers and men

we left the battleship and approached a large oval structure a couple

of hundred yards from the shore.



"You shall soon see Issus," said Xodar to Phaidor. "The few prisoners

we take are presented to her. Occasionally she selects slaves from

among them to replenish the ranks of her handmaidens. None serves

Issus above a single year," and there was a grim smile on the black's

lips that lent a cruel and sinister meaning to his simple statement.



Phaidor, though loath to believe that Issus was allied to such as

these, had commenced to entertain doubts and fears. She clung very

closely to me, no longer the proud daughter of the Master of Life and

Death upon Barsoom, but a young and frightened girl in the power of

relentless enemies.



The building which we now entered was entirely roofless. In its centre

was a long tank of water, set below the level of the floor like the

swimming pool of a natatorium. Near one side of the pool floated an

odd-looking black object. Whether it were some strange monster of

these buried waters, or a queer raft, I could not at once perceive.



We were soon to know, however, for as we reached the edge of the pool

directly above the thing, Xodar cried out a few words in a strange

tongue. Immediately a hatch cover was raised from the surface of the

object, and a black seaman sprang from the bowels of the strange craft.



Xodar addressed the seaman.



"Transmit to your officer," he said, "the commands of Dator Xodar. Say

to him that Dator Xodar, with officers and men, escorting two

prisoners, would be transported to the gardens of Issus beside the

Golden Temple."



"Blessed be the shell of thy first ancestor, most noble Dator," replied

the man. "It shall be done even as thou sayest," and raising both

hands, palms backward, above his head after the manner of salute which

is common to all races of Barsoom, he disappeared once more into the

entrails of his ship.



A moment later an officer resplendent in the gorgeous trappings of his

rank appeared on deck and welcomed Xodar to the vessel, and in the

latter's wake we filed aboard and below.



The cabin in which we found ourselves extended entirely across the

ship, having port-holes on either side below the water line. No sooner

were all below than a number of commands were given, in accordance with

which the hatch was closed and secured, and the vessel commenced to

vibrate to the rhythmic purr of its machinery.



"Where can we be going in such a tiny pool of water?" asked Phaidor.



"Not up," I replied, "for I noticed particularly that while the

building is roofless it is covered with a strong metal grating."



"Then where?" she asked again.



"From the appearance of the craft I judge we are going down," I replied.



Phaidor shuddered. For such long ages have the waters of Barsoom's

seas been a thing of tradition only that even this daughter of the

therns, born as she had been within sight of Mars' only remaining sea,

had the same terror of deep water as is a common attribute of all

Martians.



Presently the sensation of sinking became very apparent. We were going

down swiftly. Now we could hear the water rushing past the port-holes,

and in the dim light that filtered through them to the water beyond the

swirling eddies were plainly visible.



Phaidor grasped my arm.



"Save me!" she whispered. "Save me and your every wish shall be

granted. Anything within the power of the Holy Therns to give will be

yours. Phaidor--" she stumbled a little here, and then in a very low

voice, "Phaidor already is yours."



I felt very sorry for the poor child, and placed my hand over hers

where it rested on my arm. I presume my motive was misunderstood, for

with a swift glance about the apartment to assure herself that we were

alone, she threw both her arms about my neck and dragged my face down

to hers.



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