receive it electronically.
U >>
Unknown >> receive it electronically.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
Evidently he was the only other prisoner. As he slept I
leaned over and looked at him. There was something strangely
familiar about his face, and yet I could not place him.
His features were very regular and, like the proportions
of his graceful limbs and body, beautiful in the extreme.
He was very light in colour for a red man, but in other
respects he seemed a typical specimen of this handsome race.
I did not awaken him, for sleep in prison is such a priceless
boon that I have seen men transformed into raging brutes when
robbed by one of their fellow-prisoners of a few precious
moments of it.
Returning to my own cell, I found Xodar still sitting in the
same position in which I had left him.
"Man," I cried, "it will profit you nothing to mope thus.
It were no disgrace to be bested by John Carter. You have
seen that in the ease with which I accounted for Thurid.
You knew it before when on the cruiser's deck you saw me
slay three of your comrades."
"I would that you had dispatched me at the same time," he said.
"Come, come!" I cried. "There is hope yet. Neither of us is dead.
We are great fighters. Why not win to freedom?"
He looked at me in amazement.
"You know not of what you speak," he replied. "Issus is omnipotent.
Issus is omniscient. She hears now the words you speak.
She knows the thoughts you think. It is sacrilege even
to dream of breaking her commands."
"Rot, Xodar," I ejaculated impatiently.
He sprang to his feet in horror.
"The curse of Issus will fall upon you," he cried.
"In another instant you will be smitten down, writhing
to your death in horrible agony."
"Do you believe that, Xodar?" I asked.
"Of course; who would dare doubt?"
"I doubt; yes, and further, I deny," I said. "Why, Xodar,
you tell me that she even knows my thoughts. The red men
have all had that power for ages. And another wonderful power.
They can shut their minds so that none may read their thoughts.
I learned the first secret years ago; the other I never had to learn,
since upon all Barsoom is none who can read what passes in the
secret chambers of my brain.
"Your goddess cannot read my thoughts; nor can she
read yours when you are out of sight, unless you will it.
Had she been able to read mine, I am afraid that her pride
would have suffered a rather severe shock when I turned at
her command to 'gaze upon the holy vision of her radiant face.'"
"What do you mean?" he whispered in an affrighted
voice, so low that I could scarcely hear him.
"I mean that I thought her the most repulsive and vilely
hideous creature my eyes ever had rested upon."
For a moment he eyed me in horror-stricken amazement,
and then with a cry of "Blasphemer" he sprang upon me.
I did not wish to strike him again, nor was it necessary,
since he was unarmed and therefore quite harmless to me.
As he came I grasped his left wrist with my left hand,
and, swinging my right arm about his left shoulder,
caught him beneath the chin with my elbow and bore
him backward across my thigh.
There he hung helpless for a moment, glaring up at me
in impotent rage.
"Xodar," I said, "let us be friends. For a year, possibly,
we may be forced to live together in the narrow confines of
this tiny room. I am sorry to have offended you, but I could
not dream that one who had suffered from the cruel injustice
of Issus still could believe her divine.
"I will say a few more words, Xodar, with no intent
to wound your feelings further, but rather that you may
give thought to the fact that while we live we are still more
the arbiters of our own fate than is any god.
"Issus, you see, has not struck me dead, nor is she rescuing
her faithful Xodar from the clutches of the unbeliever who
defamed her fair beauty. No, Xodar, your Issus is a mortal
old woman. Once out of her clutches and she cannot harm you.
"With your knowledge of this strange land, and my knowledge
of the outer world, two such fighting-men as you and I
should be able to win our way to freedom. Even though we
died in the attempt, would not our memories be fairer than
as though we remained in servile fear to be butchered by a
cruel and unjust tyrant--call her goddess or mortal, as you will."
As I finished I raised Xodar to his feet and released him.
He did not renew the attack upon me, nor did he speak.
Instead, he walked toward the bench, and, sinking down upon it,
remained lost in deep thought for hours.
A long time afterward I heard a soft sound at the doorway
leading to one of the other apartments, and, looking up,
beheld the red Martian youth gazing intently at us.
"Kaor," I cried, after the red Martian manner of greeting.
"Kaor," he replied. "What do you here?"
"I await my death, I presume," I replied with a wry smile.
He too smiled, a brave and winning smile.
"I also," he said. "Mine will come soon. I looked upon
the radiant beauty of Issus nearly a year since. It has
always been a source of keen wonder to me that I did not
drop dead at the first sight of that hideous countenance.
And her belly! By my first ancestor, but never was there
so grotesque a figure in all the universe. That they should
call such a one Goddess of Life Eternal, Goddess of Death,
Mother of the Nearer Moon, and fifty other equally
impossible titles, is quite beyond me."
"How came you here?" I asked.
"It is very simple. I was flying a one-man air scout far to
the south when the brilliant idea occurred to me that I should
like to search for the Lost Sea of Korus which tradition
places near to the south pole. I must have inherited from my
father a wild lust for adventure, as well as a hollow where
my bump of reverence should be.
"I had reached the area of eternal ice when my port
propeller jammed, and I dropped to the ground to make repairs.
Before I knew it the air was black with fliers, and a
hundred of these First Born devils were leaping to the
ground all about me.
"With drawn swords they made for me, but before I went down
beneath them they had tasted of the steel of my father's
sword, and I had given such an account of myself as I know
would have pleased my sire had he lived to witness it."
"Your father is dead?" I asked.
"He died before the shell broke to let me step out into a
world that has been very good to me. But for the sorrow
that I had never the honour to know my father, I have been
very happy. My only sorrow now is that my mother must
mourn me as she has for ten long years mourned my father."
"Who was your father?" I asked.
He was about to reply when the outer door of our prison
opened and a burly guard entered and ordered him to his
own quarters for the night, locking the door after him
as he passed through into the further chamber.
"It is Issus' wish that you two be confined in the same
room," said the guard when he had returned to our cell.
"This cowardly slave of a slave is to serve you well,"
he said to me, indicating Xodar with a wave of his hand.
"If he does not, you are to beat him into submission.
It is Issus' wish that you heap upon him every indignity
and degradation of which you can conceive."
With these words he left us.
Xodar still sat with his face buried in his hands. I walked
to his side and placed my hand upon his shoulder.
"Xodar," I said, "you have heard the commands of Issus,
but you need not fear that I shall attempt to put them
into execution. You are a brave man, Xodar. It is your own
affair if you wish to be persecuted and humiliated; but
were I you I should assert my manhood and defy my enemies."
"I have been thinking very hard, John Carter," he said,
"of all the new ideas you gave me a few hours since. Little
by little I have been piecing together the things that you
said which sounded blasphemous to me then with the things
that I have seen in my past life and dared not even think
about for fear of bringing down upon me the wrath of Issus.
"I believe now that she is a fraud; no more divine than
you or I. More I am willing to concede--that the First Born
are no holier than the Holy Therns, nor the Holy Therns
more holy than the red men.
"The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious
belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by
those directly above us, to whose personal profit and
aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as
they wished us to believe.
"I am ready to cast off the ties that have bound me. I am
ready to defy Issus herself; but what will it avail us?
Be the First Born gods or mortals, they are a powerful race,
and we are as fast in their clutches as though we were already dead.
There is no escape."
"I have escaped from bad plights in the past, my friend,"
I replied; "nor while life is in me shall I despair of escaping
from the Isle of Shador and the Sea of Omean."
"But we cannot escape even from the four walls of our
prison," urged Xodar. "Test this flint-like surface," he cried,
smiting the solid rock that confined us. "And look upon this
polished surface; none could cling to it to reach the top."
I smiled.
"That is the least of our troubles, Xodar," I replied. "I will
guarantee to scale the wall and take you with me, if you will
help with your knowledge of the customs here to appoint the best
time for the attempt, and guide me to the shaft that lets from the
dome of this abysmal sea to the light of God's pure air above."
"Night time is the best and offers the only slender chance
we have, for then men sleep, and only a dozing watch nods
in the tops of the battleships. No watch is kept upon the
cruisers and smaller craft. The watchers upon the larger
vessels see to all about them. It is night now."
"But," I exclaimed, "it is not dark! How can it be night, then?"
He smiled.
"You forget," he said, "that we are far below ground.
The light of the sun never penetrates here. There are
no moons and no stars reflected in the bosom of Omean.
The phosphorescent light you now see pervading this great
subterranean vault emanates from the rocks that form its dome;
it is always thus upon Omean, just as the billows are always
as you see them--rolling, ever rolling over a windless sea.
"At the appointed hour of night upon the world above,
the men whose duties hold them here sleep, but the light is
ever the same."
"It will make escape more difficult," I said, and then I
shrugged my shoulders; for what, pray, is the pleasure of
doing an easy thing?
"Let us sleep on it to-night," said Xodar. "A plan may
come with our awakening."
So we threw ourselves upon the hard stone floor of our
prison and slept the sleep of tired men.
CHAPTER XI
WHEN HELL BROKE LOOSE
Early the next morning Xodar and I commenced work
upon our plans for escape. First I had him sketch upon the
stone floor of our cell as accurate a map of the south
polar regions as was possible with the crude instruments
at our disposal--a buckle from my harness, and the sharp
edge of the wondrous gem I had taken from Sator Throg.
From this I computed the general direction of Helium and the
distance at which it lay from the opening which led to Omean.
Then I had him draw a map of Omean, indicating plainly
the position of Shador and of the opening in the dome which
led to the outer world.
These I studied until they were indelibly imprinted in my
memory. From Xodar I learned the duties and customs of
the guards who patrolled Shador. It seemed that during the
hours set aside for sleep only one man was on duty at a
time. He paced a beat that passed around the prison, at a
distance of about a hundred feet from the building.
The pace of the sentries, Xodar said, was very slow,
requiring nearly ten minutes to make a single round.
This meant that for practically five minutes at a time each
side of the prison was unguarded as the sentry pursued his
snail like pace upon the opposite side.
"This information you ask," said Xodar, "will be all very
valuable AFTER we get out, but nothing that you have
asked has any bearing on that first and most important
consideration."
"We will get out all right," I replied, laughing. "Leave that to me."
"When shall we make the attempt?" he asked.
"The first night that finds a small craft moored near
the shore of Shador," I replied.
"But how will you know that any craft is moored near
Shador? The windows are far beyond our reach."
"Not so, friend Xodar; look!"
With a bound I sprang to the bars of the window opposite
us, and took a quick survey of the scene without.
Several small craft and two large battleships lay within
a hundred yards of Shador.
"To-night," I thought, and was just about to voice my
decision to Xodar, when, without warning, the door of our
prison opened and a guard stepped in.
If the fellow saw me there our chances of escape might
quickly go glimmering, for I knew that they would put me
in irons if they had the slightest conception of the wonderful
agility which my earthly muscles gave me upon Mars.
The man had entered and was standing facing the centre
of the room, so that his back was toward me. Five feet
above me was the top of a partition wall separating our
cell from the next.
There was my only chance to escape detection. If the
fellow turned, I was lost; nor could I have dropped to the
floor undetected, since he was no nearly below me that
I would have struck him had I done so.
"Where is the white man?" cried the guard of Xodar.
"Issus commands his presence." He started to turn to see if
I were in another part of the cell.
I scrambled up the iron grating of the window until I
could catch a good footing on the sill with one foot; then I
let go my hold and sprang for the partition top.
"What was that?" I heard the deep voice of the black
bellow as my metal grated against the stone wall as I slipped
over. Then I dropped lightly to the floor of the cell beyond.
"Where is the white slave?" again cried the guard.
"I know not," replied Xodar. "He was here even as you
entered. I am not his keeper--go find him."
The black grumbled something that I could not understand,
and then I heard him unlocking the door into one
of the other cells on the further side. Listening intently,
I caught the sound as the door closed behind him. Then I
sprang once more to the top of the partition and dropped
into my own cell beside the astonished Xodar.
"Do you see now how we will escape?" I asked him in a whisper.
"I see how you may," he replied, "but I am no wiser than before
as to how I am to pass these walls. Certain it is that I cannot
bounce over them as you do."
We heard the guard moving about from cell to cell, and
finally, his rounds completed, he again entered ours.
When his eyes fell upon me they fairly bulged from his head.
"By the shell of my first ancestor!" he roared.
"Where have you been?"
"I have been in prison since you put me here yesterday,"
I answered. "I was in this room when you entered.
You had better look to your eyesight."
He glared at me in mingled rage and relief.
"Come," he said. "Issus commands your presence."
He conducted me outside the prison, leaving Xodar behind.
There we found several other guards, and with them the
red Martian youth who occupied another cell upon Shador.
The journey I had taken to the Temple of Issus on the
preceding day was repeated. The guards kept the red boy
and myself separated, so that we had no opportunity to continue
the conversation that had been interrupted the previous night.
The youth's face had haunted me. Where had I seen
him before. There was something strangely familiar in
every line of him; in his carriage, his manner of speaking,
his gestures. I could have sworn that I knew him, and yet
I knew too that I had never seen him before.
When we reached the gardens of Issus we were led away
from the temple instead of toward it. The way wound through
enchanted parks to a mighty wall that towered a hundred
feet in air.
Massive gates gave egress upon a small plain, surrounded
by the same gorgeous forests that I had seen at the foot of
the Golden Cliffs.
Crowds of blacks were strolling in the same direction
that our guards were leading us, and with them mingled
my old friends the plant men and great white apes.
The brutal beasts moved among the crowd as pet dogs
might. If they were in the way the blacks pushed them
roughly to one side, or whacked them with the flat of a
sword, and the animals slunk away as in great fear.
Presently we came upon our destination, a great amphitheatre
situated at the further edge of the plain, and about half a
mile beyond the garden walls.
Through a massive arched gateway the blacks poured in
to take their seats, while our guards led us to a smaller
entrance near one end of the structure.
Through this we passed into an enclosure beneath the
seats, where we found a number of other prisoners herded
together under guard. Some of them were in irons, but
for the most part they seemed sufficiently awed by the
presence of their guards to preclude any possibility of
attempted escape.
During the trip from Shador I had had no opportunity
to talk with my fellow-prisoner, but now that we were safely
within the barred paddock our guards abated their watchfulness,
with the result that I found myself able to approach the red
Martian youth for whom I felt such a strange attraction.
"What is the object of this assembly?" I asked him.
"Are we to fight for the edification of the First Born,
or is it something worse than that?"
"It is a part of the monthly rites of Issus," he replied,
"in which black men wash the sins from their souls in the
blood of men from the outer world. If, perchance, the
black is killed, it is evidence of his disloyalty to Issus--
the unpardonable sin. If he lives through the contest he
is held acquitted of the charge that forced the sentence of
the rites, as it is called, upon him.
"The forms of combat vary. A number of us may be
pitted together against an equal number, or twice the
number of blacks; or singly we may be sent forth to
face wild beasts, or some famous black warrior."
"And if we are victorious," I asked, "what then--freedom?"
He laughed.
"Freedom, forsooth. The only freedom for us death.
None who enters the domains of the First Born ever leave.
If we prove able fighters we are permitted to fight often.
If we are not mighty fighters--" He shrugged his shoulders.
"Sooner or later we die in the arena."
"And you have fought often?" I asked.
"Very often," he replied. "It is my only pleasure. Some
hundred black devils have I accounted for during nearly a
year of the rites of Issus. My mother would be very proud
could she only know how well I have maintained the traditions
of my father's prowess."
"Your father must have been a mighty warrior!" I said.
"I have known most of the warriors of Barsoom in my
time; doubtless I knew him. Who was he?"
"My father was--"
"Come, calots!" cried the rough voice of a guard. "To
the slaughter with you," and roughly we were hustled to
the steep incline that led to the chambers far below which
let out upon the arena.
The amphitheatre, like all I had ever seen upon Barsoom,
was built in a large excavation. Only the highest seats,
which formed the low wall surrounding the pit, were above the
level of the ground. The arena itself was far below the surface.
Just beneath the lowest tier of seats was a series of
barred cages on a level with the surface of the arena. Into
these we were herded. But, unfortunately, my youthful friend
was not of those who occupied a cage with me.
Directly opposite my cage was the throne of Issus. Here
the horrid creature squatted, surrounded by a hundred slave
maidens sparkling in jewelled trappings. Brilliant cloths of
many hues and strange patterns formed the soft cushion
covering of the dais upon which they reclined about her.
On four sides of the throne and several feet below it stood
three solid ranks of heavily armed soldiery, elbow to elbow.
In front of these were the high dignitaries of this mock
heaven--gleaming blacks bedecked with precious stones, upon
their foreheads the insignia of their rank set in circles of gold.
On both sides of the throne stretched a solid mass
of humanity from top to bottom of the amphitheatre.
There were as many women as men, and each was clothed in
the wondrously wrought harness of his station and his house.
With each black was from one to three slaves, drawn from
the domains of the therns and from the outer world. The
blacks are all "noble." There is no peasantry among the
First Born. Even the lowest soldier is a god, and has his
slaves to wait upon him.
The First Born do no work. The men fight--that is a sacred
privilege and duty; to fight and die for Issus. The women do
nothing, absolutely nothing. Slaves wash them, slaves dress
them, slaves feed them. There are some, even, who have
slaves that talk for them, and I saw one who sat during
the rites with closed eyes while a slave narrated to her the
events that were transpiring within the arena.
The first event of the day was the Tribute to Issus. It
marked the end of those poor unfortunates who had looked
upon the divine glory of the goddess a full year before.
There were ten of them--splendid beauties from the proud
courts of mighty Jeddaks and from the temples of the
Holy Therns. For a year they had served in the retinue of
Issus; to-day they were to pay the price of this divine
preferment with their lives; tomorrow they would grace the
tables of the court functionaries.
A huge black entered the arena with the young women.
Carefully he inspected them, felt of their limbs and poked
them in the ribs. Presently he selected one of their number
whom he led before the throne of Issus. He addressed
some words to the goddess which I could not hear. Issus
nodded her head. The black raised his hands above his head
in token of salute, grasped the girl by the wrist, and dragged
her from the arena through a small doorway below the throne.
"Issus will dine well to-night," said a prisoner beside me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"That was her dinner that old Thabis is taking to the
kitchens. Didst not note how carefully he selected the
plumpest and tenderest of the lot?"
I growled out my curses on the monster sitting opposite
us on the gorgeous throne.
"Fume not," admonished my companion; "you will see
far worse than that if you live even a month among the
First Born."
I turned again in time to see the gate of a nearby cage
thrown open and three monstrous white apes spring into the
arena. The girls shrank in a frightened group in the centre
of the enclosure.
One was on her knees with imploring hands outstretched
toward Issus; but the hideous deity only leaned further
forward in keener anticipation of the entertainment to come.
At length the apes spied the huddled knot of terror-stricken
maidens and with demoniacal shrieks of bestial frenzy,
charged upon them.
A wave of mad fury surged over me. The cruel cowardliness
of the power-drunk creature whose malignant mind conceived
such frightful forms of torture stirred to their uttermost
depths my resentment and my manhood. The blood-red haze
that presaged death to my foes swam before my eyes.
The guard lolled before the unbarred gate of the cage
which confined me. What need of bars, indeed, to keep
those poor victims from rushing into the arena which the
edict of the gods had appointed as their death place!
A single blow sent the black unconscious to the ground.
Snatching up his long-sword, I sprang into the arena. The
apes were almost upon the maidens, but a couple of mighty
bounds were all my earthly muscles required to carry me
to the centre of the sand-strewn floor.
For an instant silence reigned in the great amphitheatre,
then a wild shout arose from the cages of the doomed.
My long-sword circled whirring through the air, and a great
ape sprawled, headless, at the feet of the fainting girls.
The other apes turned now upon me, and as I stood facing
them a sullen roar from the audience answered the wild cheers
from the cages. From the tail of my eye I saw a score
of guards rushing across the glistening sand toward me.
Then a figure broke from one of the cages behind them.
It was the youth whose personality so fascinated me.
He paused a moment before the cages, with upraised sword.
"Come, men of the outer world!" he shouted. "Let us
make our deaths worth while, and at the back of this
unknown warrior turn this day's Tribute to Issus into an
orgy of revenge that will echo through the ages and cause
black skins to blanch at each repetition of the rites of Issus.
Come! The racks without your cages are filled with blades."
Without waiting to note the outcome of his plea, he
turned and bounded toward me. From every cage that
harboured red men a thunderous shout went up in answer
to his exhortation. The inner guards went down beneath
howling mobs, and the cages vomited forth their inmates hot
with the lust to kill.
The racks that stood without were stripped of the swords
with which the prisoners were to have been armed to enter
their allotted combats, and a swarm of determined warriors
sped to our support.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19