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"Wreak your vengeance to the utmost," was my message
to the green allies, "for by night there will be none left to
avenge your wrongs."
Presently I saw the ten battleships that had been ordered
to hold the shaft of Omean. They were returning at full
speed, firing their stern batteries almost continuously. There
could be but one explanation. They were being pursued by
another hostile fleet. Well, the situation could be no worse.
The expedition already was doomed. No man that had
embarked upon it would return across that dreary ice cap.
How I wished that I fight face Zat Arras with my longsword
for just an instant before I died! It was he who had
caused our failure.
As I watched the oncoming ten I saw their pursuers race
swiftly into sight. It was another great fleet; for a moment
I could not believe my eyes, but finally I was forced to
admit that the most fatal calamity had overtaken the expedition,
for the fleet I saw was none other than the fleet of the
First Born, that should have been safely bottled up in Omean.
What a series of misfortunes and disasters! What awful
fate hovered over me, that I should have been so terribly
thwarted at every angle of my search for my lost love!
Could it be possible that the curse of Issus was upon me!
That there was, indeed, some malign divinity in that hideous
carcass! I would not believe it, and, throwing back my
shoulders, I ran to the deck below to join my men in repelling
boarders from one of the thern craft that had grappled
us broadside. In the wild lust of hand-to-hand combat
my old dauntless hopefulness returned. And as thern after
thern went down beneath my blade, I could almost feel that
we should win success in the end, even from apparent failure.
My presence among the men so greatly inspirited them
that they fell upon the luckless whites with such terrible
ferocity that within a few moments we had turned the
tables upon them and a second later as we swarmed their
own decks I had the satisfaction of seeing their commander
take the long leap from the bows of his vessel in token of
surrender and defeat.
Then I joined Kantos Kan. He had been watching what
had taken place on the deck below, and it seemed to have
given him a new thought. Immediately he passed an order
to one of his officers, and presently the colours of the
Prince of Helium broke from every point of the flagship.
A great cheer arose from the men of our own ship, a cheer
that was taken up by every other vessel of our expedition
as they in turn broke my colours from their upper works.
Then Kantos Kan sprang his coup. A signal legible to
every sailor of all the fleets engaged in that fierce struggle
was strung aloft upon the flagship.
"Men of Helium for the Prince of Helium against all
his enemies," it read. Presently my colours broke from
one of Zat Arras' ships. Then from another and another.
On some we could see fierce battles waging between the
Zodangan soldiery and the Heliumetic crews, but eventually
the colours of the Prince of Helium floated above every
ship that had followed Zat Arras upon our trail--only his
flagship flew them not.
Zat Arras had brought five thousand ships. The sky was
black with the three enormous fleets. It was Helium against
the field now, and the fight had settled to countless individual
duels. There could be little or no manoeuvering of fleets in
that crowded, fire-split sky.
Zat Arras' flagship was close to my own. I could see the
thin features of the man from where I stood. His Zodangan
crew was pouring broadside after broadside into us and we were
returning their fire with equal ferocity. Closer and closer
came the two vessels until but a few yards intervened.
Grapplers and boarders lined the contiguous rails of each.
We were preparing for the death struggle with our hated enemy.
There was but a yard between the two mighty ships as
the first grappling irons were hurled. I rushed to the deck to
be with my men as they boarded. Just as the vessels came
together with a slight shock, I forced my way through the
lines and was the first to spring to the deck of Zat Arras'
ship. After me poured a yelling, cheering, cursing throng of
Helium's best fighting-men. Nothing could withstand them
in the fever of battle lust which enthralled them.
Down went the Zodangans before that surging tide of
war, and as my men cleared the lower decks I sprang to
the forward deck where stood Zat Arras.
"You are my prisoner, Zat Arras," I cried. "Yield and
you shall have quarter."
For a moment I could not tell whether he contemplated
acceding to my demand or facing me with drawn sword.
For an instant he stood hesitating, and then throwing down
his arms he turned and rushed to the opposite side of the
deck. Before I could overtake him he had sprung to the rail
and hurled himself headforemost into the awful depths below.
And thus came Zat Arras, Jed of Zodanga, to his end.
On and on went that strange battle. The therns and
blacks had not combined against us. Wherever thern ship
met ship of the First Born was a battle royal, and in this I
thought I saw our salvation. Wherever messages could be
passed between us that could not be intercepted by our
enemies I passed the word that all our vessels were to
withdraw from the fight as rapidly as possible, taking a
position to the west and south of the combatants. I also sent
an air scout to the fighting green men in the gardens below
to re-embark, and to the transports to join us.
My commanders were further instructed than when engaged
with an enemy to draw him as rapidly as possible toward a
ship of his hereditary foeman, and by careful manoeuvring to
force the two to engage, thus leaving him- self free to withdraw.
This stratagem worked to perfection, and just before the sun
went down I had the satisfaction of seeing all that was left
of my once mighty fleet gathered nearly twenty miles southwest
of the still terrific battle between the blacks and whites.
I now transferred Xodar to another battleship and sent
him with all the transports and five thousand battleships
directly overhead to the Temple of Issus. Carthoris and I,
with Kantos Kan, took the remaining ships and headed
for the entrance to Omean.
Our plan now was to attempt to make a combined assault
upon Issus at dawn of the following day. Tars Tarkas
with his green warriors and Hor Vastus with the red men,
guided by Xodar, were to land within the garden of Issus
or the surrounding plains; while Carthoris, Kantos Kan, and
I were to lead our smaller force from the sea of Omean through
the pits beneath the temple, which Carthoris knew so well.
I now learned for the first time the cause of my ten
ships' retreat from the mouth of the shaft. It seemed
that when they had come upon the shaft the navy of the
First Born were already issuing from its mouth. Fully twenty
vessels had emerged, and though they gave battle immediately
in an effort to stem the tide that rolled from the black pit,
the odds against them were too great and they were forced to flee.
With great caution we approached the shaft, under cover
of darkness. At a distance of several miles I caused the
fleet to be halted, and from there Carthoris went ahead alone
upon a one-man flier to reconnoitre. In perhaps half an
hour he returned to report that there was no sign of a patrol
boat or of the enemy in any form, and so we moved swiftly
and noiselessly forward once more toward Omean.
At the mouth of the shaft we stopped again for a moment
for all the vessels to reach their previously appointed stations,
then with the flagship I dropped quickly into the black depths,
while one by one the other vessels followed me in quick succession.
We had decided to stake all on the chance that we
would be able to reach the temple by the subterranean way
and so we left no guard of vessels at the shaft's mouth.
Nor would it have profited us any to have done so, for we
did not have sufficient force all told to have withstood the
vast navy of the First Born had they returned to engage us.
For the safety of our entrance upon Omean we depended
largely upon the very boldness of it, believing that it would
be some little time before the First Born on guard there
would realize that it was an enemy and not their own
returning fleet that was entering the vault of the buried sea.
And such proved to be the case. In fact, four hundred of
my fleet of five hundred rested safely upon the bosom of
Omean before the first shot was fired. The battle was short
and hot, but there could have been but one outcome, for the
First Born in the carelessness of fancied security had left
but a handful of ancient and obsolete hulks to guard their
mighty harbour.
It was at Carthoris' suggestion that we landed our prisoners
under guard upon a couple of the larger islands, and then
towed the ships of the First Born to the shaft, where we
managed to wedge a number of them securely in the
interior of the great well. Then we turned on the buoyance
rays in the balance of them and let them rise by themselves
to further block the passage to Omean as they came into
contact with the vessels already lodged there.
We now felt that it would be some time at least before
the returning First Born could reach the surface of Omean,
and that we would have ample opportunity to make for the
subterranean passages which lead to Issus. One of the first
steps I took was to hasten personally with a good-sized force
to the island of the submarine, which I took without
resistance on the part of the small guard there.
I found the submarine in its pool, and at once placed a
strong guard upon it and the island, where I remained to
wait the coming of Carthoris and the others.
Among the prisoners was Yersted, commander of the
submarine. He recognized me from the three trips that I
had taken with him during my captivity among the First Born.
"How does it seem," I asked him, "to have the tables
turned? To be prisoner of your erstwhile captive?"
He smiled, a very grim smile pregnant with hidden meaning.
"It will not be for long, John Carter," he replied.
"We have been expecting you and we are prepared."
"So it would appear," I answered, "for you were all
ready to become my prisoners with scarce a blow struck
on either side."
"The fleet must have missed you," he said, "but it will
return to Omean, and then that will be a very different
matter--for John Carter."
"I do not know that the fleet has missed me as yet," I
said, but of course he did not grasp my meaning, and
only looked puzzled.
"Many prisoners travel to Issus in your grim craft, Yersted?"
I asked.
"Very many," he assented.
Might you remember one whom men called Dejah Thoris?"
"Well, indeed, for her great beauty, and then, too, for the
fact that she was wife to the first mortal that ever escaped
from Issus through all the countless ages of her godhood.
And they way that Issus remembers her best as the wife of
one and the mother of another who raised their hands
against the Goddess of Life Eternal."
I shuddered for fear of the cowardly revenge that I knew
Issus might have taken upon the innocent Dejah Thoris for
the sacrilege of her son and her husband.
"And where is Dejah Thoris now?" I asked, knowing that
he would say the words I most dreaded, but yet I loved her
so that I could not refrain from hearing even the worst
about her fate so that it fell from the lips of one who
had seen her but recently. It was to me as though it
brought her closer to me.
"Yesterday the monthly rites of Issus were held," replied
Yersted, "and I saw her then sitting in her accustomed
place at the foot of Issus."
"What," I cried, "she is not dead, then?"
"Why, no," replied the black, "it has been no year
since she gazed upon the divine glory of the radiant face of--"
"No year?" I interrupted.
"Why, no," insisted Yersted. "It cannot have been upward
of three hundred and seventy or eighty days."
A great light burst upon me. How stupid I had been! I
could scarcely retain an outward exhibition of my great
joy. Why had I forgotten the great difference in the length
of Martian and Earthly years! The ten Earth years I had
spent upon Barsoom had encompassed but five years and
ninety-six days of Martian time, whose days are forty-one
minutes longer than ours, and whose years number six hundred
and eighty-seven days.
I am in time! I am in time! The words surged through
my brain again and again, until at last I must have voiced
them audibly, for Yersted shook his head.
"In time to save your Princess?" he asked, and then without
waiting for my reply, "No, John Carter, Issus will not give
up her own. She knows that you are coming, and ere ever a
vandal foot is set within the precincts of the Temple of Issus,
if such a calamity should befall, Dejah Thoris will be put
away for ever from the last faint hope of rescue."
"You mean that she will be killed merely to thwart me?" I asked.
"Not that, other than as a last resort," he replied. "Hast
ever heard of the Temple of the Sun? It is there that they
will put her. It lies far within the inner court of the Temple
of Issus, a little temple that raises a thin spire far above the
spires and minarets of the great temple that surrounds it.
Beneath it, in the ground, there lies the main body of the
temple consisting in six hundred and eighty-seven circular
chambers, one below another. To each chamber a single
corridor leads through solid rock from the pits of Issus.
"As the entire Temple of the Sun revolves once with
each revolution of Barsoom about the sun, but once each
year does the entrance to each separate chamber come
opposite the mouth of the corridor which forms its only
link to the world without.
"Here Issus puts those who displease her, but whom she
does not care to execute forthwith. Or to punish a noble
of the First Born she may cause him to be placed within
a chamber of the Temple of the Sun for a year. Ofttimes
she imprisons an executioner with the condemned, that
death may come in a certain horrible form upon a given
day, or again but enough food is deposited in the chamber
to sustain life but the number of days that Issus has
allotted for mental anguish.
"Thus will Dejah Thoris die, and her fate will be sealed
by the first alien foot that crosses the threshold of Issus."
So I was to be thwarted in the end, although I had performed
the miraculous and come within a few short moments of my
divine Princess, yet was I as far from her as when I stood
upon the banks of the Hudson forty-eight million miles away.
CHAPTER XXI
THROUGH FLOOD AND FLAME
Yersted's information convinced me that there was no time
to be lost. I must reach the Temple of Issus secretly before
the forces under Tars Tarkas assaulted at dawn. Once within
its hated walls I was positive that I could overcome the
guards of Issus and bear away my Princess, for at my back
I would have a force ample for the occasion.
No sooner had Carthoris and the others joined me than
we commenced the transportation of our men through the
submerged passage to the mouth of the gangways which lead
from the submarine pool at the temple end of the watery
tunnel to the pits of Issus.
Many trips were required, but at last all stood safely
together again at the beginning of the end of our quest.
Five thousand strong we were, all seasoned fighting-men
of the most warlike race of the red men of Barsoom.
As Carthoris alone knew the hidden ways of the tunnels
we could not divide the party and attack the temple at
several points at once as would have been most desirable,
and so it was decided that he lead us all as quickly as
possible to a point near the temple's centre.
As we were about to leave the pool and enter the corridor,
an officer called my attention to the waters upon which
the submarine floated. At first they seemed to be merely
agitated as from the movement of some great body beneath the
surface, and I at once conjectured that another submarine
was rising to the surface in pursuit of us; but presently it
became apparent that the level of the waters was rising, not
with extreme rapidity, but very surely, and that soon they
would overflow the sides of the pool and submerge the floor
of the chamber.
For a moment I did not fully grasp the terrible import
of the slowly rising water. It was Carthoris who realized the
full meaning of the thing--its cause and the reason for it.
"Haste!" he cried. "If we delay, we all are lost. The pumps
of Omean have been stopped. They would drown us like rats
in a trap. We must reach the upper levels of the pits in
advance of the flood or we shall never reach them. Come."
"Lead the way, Carthoris," I cried. "We will follow."
At my command, the youth leaped into one of the corridors,
and in column of twos the soldiers followed him in good order,
each company entering the corridor only at the command of
its dwar, or captain.
Before the last company filed from the chamber the water
was ankle deep, and that the men were nervous was quite
evident. Entirely unaccustomed to water except in quantities
sufficient for drinking and bathing purposes the red Martians
instinctively shrank from it in such formidable depths and
menacing activity. That they were undaunted while it swirled
and eddied about their ankles, spoke well for their bravery
and their discipline.
I was the last to leave the chamber of the submarine, and
as I followed the rear of the column toward the corridor, I
moved through water to my knees. The corridor, too, was
flooded to the same depth, for its floor was on a level with
the floor of the chamber from which it led, nor was there
any perceptible rise for many yards.
The march of the troops through the corridor was as rapid
as was consistent with the number of men that moved
through so narrow a passage, but it was not ample to permit
us to gain appreciably on the pursuing tide. As the level of
the passage rose, so, too, did the waters rise until it soon
became apparent to me, who brought up the rear, that they
were gaining rapidly upon us. I could understand the reason
for this, as with the narrowing expanse of Omean as the waters
rose toward the apex of its dome, the rapidity of its rise would
increase in inverse ratio to the ever-lessening space to be filled.
Long ere the last of the column could hope to reach the
upper pits which lay above the danger point I was convinced
that the waters would surge after us in overwhelming volume,
and that fully half the expedition would be snuffed out.
As I cast about for some means of saving as many as
possible of the doomed men, I saw a diverging corridor
which seemed to rise at a steep angle at my right. The
waters were now swirling about my waist. The men directly
before me were quickly becoming panic-stricken. Something
must be done at once or they would rush forward upon their
fellows in a mad stampede that would result in trampling
down hundreds beneath the flood and eventually clogging the
passage beyond any hope of retreat for those in advance.
Raising my voice to its utmost, I shouted my command
to the dwars ahead of me.
"Call back the last twenty-five utans," I shouted.
"Here seems a way of escape. Turn back and follow me."
My orders were obeyed by nearer thirty utans, so that some
three thousand men came about and hastened into the teeth
of the flood to reach the corridor up which I directed them.
As the first dwar passed in with his utan I cautioned him
to listen closely for my commands, and under no circumstances
to venture into the open, or leave the pits for the temple
proper until I should have come up with him, "or you know
that I died before I could reach you."
The officer saluted and left me. The men filed rapidly past
me and entered the diverging corridor which I hoped would
lead to safety. The water rose breast high. Men stumbled,
floundered, and went down. Many I grasped and set upon
their feet again, but alone the work was greater than I could
cope with. Soldiers were being swept beneath the boiling
torrent, never to rise. At length the dwar of the 10th utan
took a stand beside me. He was a valorous soldier, Gur Tus
by name, and together we kept the now thoroughly frightened
troops in the semblance of order and rescued many that
would have drowned otherwise.
Djor Kantos, son of Kantos Kan, and a padwar of the
fifth utan joined us when his utan reached the opening
through which the men were fleeing. Thereafter not a man
was lost of all the hundreds that remained to pass from the
main corridor to the branch.
As the last utan was filing past us the waters had risen
until they surged about our necks, but we clasped hands
and stood our ground until the last man had passed to the
comparative safety of the new passageway. Here we found
an immediate and steep ascent, so that within a hundred
yards we had reached a point above the waters.
For a few minutes we continued rapidly up the steep
grade, which I hoped would soon bring us quickly to
the upper pits that let into the Temple of Issus. But I was
to meet with a cruel disappointment.
Suddenly I heard a cry of "fire" far ahead, followed almost
at once by cries of terror and the loud commands of dwars
and padwars who were evidently attempting to direct their
men away from some grave danger. At last the report
came back to us. "They have fired the pits ahead."
"We are hemmed in by flames in front and flood behind."
"Help, John Carter; we are suffocating," and then there
swept back upon us at the rear a wave of dense smoke
that sent us, stumbling and blinded, into a choking retreat.
There was naught to do other than seek a new avenue of
escape. The fire and smoke were to be feared a thousand
times over the water, and so I seized upon the first gallery
which led out of and up from the suffocating smoke that
was engulfing us.
Again I stood to one side while the soldiers hastened through
on the new way. Some two thousand must have passed at a rapid run,
when the stream ceased, but I was not sure that all had been rescued
who had not passed the point of origin of the flames, and so to assure
myself that no poor devil was left behind to die a horrible death,
unsuccoured, I ran quickly up the gallery in the direction of the
flames which I could now see burning with a dull glow far ahead.
It was hot and stifling work, but at last I reached a
point where the fire lit up the corridor sufficiently
for me to see that no soldier of Helium lay between me
and the conflagration--what was in it or upon the far side
I could not know, nor could any man have passed through
that seething hell of chemicals and lived to learn.
Having satisfied my sense of duty, I turned and ran rapidly
back to the corridor through which my men had passed.
To my horror, however, I found that my retreat in this
direction had been blocked--across the mouth of the corridor
stood a massive steel grating that had evidently been lowered
from its resting-place above for the purpose of effectually
cutting off my escape.
That our principal movements were known to the First
Born I could not have doubted, in view of the attack of
the fleet upon us the day before, nor could the stopping
of the pumps of Omean at the psychological moment have
been due to chance, nor the starting of a chemical
combustion within the one corridor through which we
were advancing upon the Temple of Issus been due to
aught than well-calculated design.
And now the dropping of the steel gate to pen me effectually
between fire and flood seemed to indicate that invisible
eyes were upon us at every moment. What chance had I,
then, to rescue Dejah Thoris were I to be compelled to fight
foes who never showed themselves. A thousand times I berated
myself for being drawn into such a trap as I might
have known these pits easily could be. Now I saw that it
would have been much better to have kept our force intact
and made a concerted attack upon the temple from the valley
side, trusting to chance and our great fighting ability to
have overwhelmed the First Born and compelled the safe
delivery of Dejah Thoris to me.
The smoke from the fire was forcing me further and further
back down the corridor toward the waters which I could hear
surging through the darkness. With my men had gone the
last torch, nor was this corridor lighted by the radiance
of phosphorescent rock as were those of the lower levels.
It was this fact that assured me that I was not far from
the upper pits which lie directly beneath the temple.
Finally I felt the lapping waters about my feet. The smoke
was thick behind me. My suffering was intense. There seemed
but one thing to do, and that to choose the easier death
which confronted me, and so I moved on down the corridor
until the cold waters of Omean closed about me, and I swam
on through utter blackness toward--what?
The instinct of self-preservation is strong even when one,
unafraid and in the possession of his highest reasoning
faculties, knows that death--positive and unalterable--lies
just ahead. And so I swam slowly on, waiting for my head
to touch the top of the corridor, which would mean that I
had reached the limit of my flight and the point where I
must sink for ever to an unmarked grave.
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