The Chessmen of Mars
struggled the thing dragged her back into the room with Luud. It held
her tight and drew her close, and then, to her horror, it commenced to
caress her.
"You see now," she heard Luud's dull voice, "the futility of
revolt--and its punishment."
Tara of Helium fought to defend herself, but pitifully weak were her
muscles against this brainless incarnation of brute power. Yet she
fought, fought on in the face of hopeless odds for the honor of the
proud name she bore--fought alone, she whom the fighting men of a
mighty empire, the flower of Martian chivalry, would gladly have lain
down their lives to save.
CHAPTER VII
A REPELLENT SIGHT
The cruiser Vanator careened through the tempest. That she had not been
dashed to the ground, or twisted by the force of the elements into
tangled wreckage, was due entirely to the caprice of Nature. For all
the duration of the storm she rode, a helpless derelict, upon those
storm-tossed waves of wind. But for all the dangers and vicissitudes
they underwent, she and her crew might have borne charmed lives up to
within an hour of the abating of the hurricane. It was then that the
catastrophe occurred--a catastrophe indeed to the crew of the Vanator
and the kingdom of Gathol.
The men had been without food or drink since leaving Helium, and they
had been hurled about and buffeted in their lashings until all were
worn to exhaustion. There was a brief lull in the storm during which
one of the crew attempted to reach his quarters, after releasing the
lashings which had held him to the precarious safety of the deck. The
act in itself was a direct violation of orders and, in the eyes of the
other members of the crew, the effect, which came with startling
suddenness, took the form of a swift and terrible retribution. Scarce
had the man released the safety snaps ere a swift arm of the
storm-monster encircled the ship, rolling it over and over, with the
result that the foolhardy warrior went overboard at the first turn.
Unloosed from their lashing by the constant turning and twisting of the
ship and the force of the wind, the boarding and landing tackle had
been trailing beneath the keel, a tangled mass of cordage and leather.
Upon the occasions that the Vanator rolled completely over, these
things would be wrapped around her until another revolution in the
opposite direction, or the wind itself, carried them once again clear
of the deck to trail, whipping in the storm, beneath the hurtling ship.
Into this fell the body of the warrior, and as a drowning man clutches
at a straw so the fellow clutched at the tangled cordage that caught
him and arrested his fall. With the strength of desperation he clung to
the cordage, seeking frantically to entangle his legs and body in it.
With each jerk of the ship his hand holds were all but torn loose, and
though he knew that eventually they would be and that he must be dashed
to the ground beneath, yet he fought with the madness that is born of
hopelessness for the pitiful second which but prolonged his agony.
It was upon this sight then that Gahan of Gathol looked, over the edge
of the careening deck of the Vanator, as he sought to learn the fate of
his warrior. Lashed to the gunwale close at hand a single landing
leather that had not fouled the tangled mass beneath whipped free from
the ship's side, the hook snapping at its outer end. The Jed of Gathol
grasped the situation in a single glance. Below him one of his people
looked into the eyes of Death. To the jed's hand lay the means for
succor.
There was no instant's hesitation. Casting off his deck lashings, he
seized the landing leather and slipped over the ship's side. Swinging
like a bob upon a mad pendulum he swung far out and back again, turning
and twisting three thousand feet above the surface of Barsoom, and
then, at last, the thing he had hoped for occurred. He was carried
within reach of the cordage where the warrior still clung, though with
rapidly diminishing strength. Catching one leg on a loop of the tangled
strands Gahan pulled himself close enough to seize another quite near
to the fellow. Clinging precariously to this new hold the jed slowly
drew in the landing leather, down which he had clambered until he could
grasp the hook at its end. This he fastened to a ring in the warrior's
harness, just before the man's weakened fingers slipped from their hold
upon the cordage.
Temporarily, at least, he had saved the life of his subject, and now he
turned his attention toward insuring his own safety. Inextricably
entangled in the mess to which he was clinging were numerous other
landing hooks such as he had attached to the warrior's harness, and
with one of these he sought to secure himself until the storm should
abate sufficiently to permit him to climb to the deck, but even as he
reached for one that swung near him the ship was caught in a renewed
burst of the storm's fury, the thrashing cordage whipped and snapped to
the lunging of the great craft and one of the heavy metal hooks,
lashing through the air, struck the Jed of Gathol fair between the eyes.
Momentarily stunned, Gahan's fingers slipped from their hold upon the
cordage and the man shot downward through the thin air of dying Mars
toward the ground three thousand feet beneath, while upon the deck of
the rolling Vanator his faithful warriors clung to their lashings all
unconscious of the fate of their beloved leader; nor was it until more
than an hour later, after the storm had materially subsided, that they
realized he was lost, or knew the self-sacrificing heroism of the act
that had sealed his doom. The Vanator now rested upon an even keel as
she was carried along by a strong, though steady, wind. The warriors
had cast off their deck lashings and the officers were taking account
of losses and damage when a weak cry was heard from oversides,
attracting their attention to the man hanging in the cordage beneath
the keel. Strong arms hoisted him to the deck and then it was that the
crew of the Vanator learned of the heroism of their jed and his end.
How far they had traveled since his loss they could only vaguely guess,
nor could they return in search of him in the disabled condition of the
ship. It was a saddened company that drifted onward through the air
toward whatever destination Fate was to choose for them.
And Gahan, Jed of Gathol--what of him? Plummet-like he fell for a
thousand feet and then the storm seized him in its giant clutch and
bore him far aloft again. As a bit of paper borne upon a gale he was
tossed about in mid-air, the sport and plaything of the wind. Over and
over it turned him and upward and downward it carried him, but after
each new sally of the element he was brought nearer to the ground. The
freaks of cyclonic storms are the rule of cyclonic storms, since
such storms are in themselves freaks. They uproot and demolish
giant trees, and in the same gust they transport frail infants for
miles and deposit them unharmed in their wake.
And so it was with Gahan of Gathol. Expecting momentarily to be dashed
to destruction he presently found himself deposited gently upon the
soft, ochre moss of a dead sea-bottom, bodily no worse off for his
harrowing adventure than in the possession of a slight swelling upon
his forehead where the metal hook had struck him. Scarcely able to
believe that Fate had dealt thus gently with him, the jed arose slowly,
as though more than half convinced that he should discover crushed and
splintered bones that would not support his weight. But he was intact.
He looked about him in a vain effort at orientation. The air was filled
with flying dust and debris. The Sun was obliterated. His vision was
confined to a radius of a few hundred yards of ochre moss and
dust-filled air. Five hundred yards away in any direction there might
have arisen the walls of a great city and he not known it. It was
useless to move from where he was until the air cleared, since he could
not know in what direction he was moving, and so he stretched himself
upon the moss and waited, pondering the fate of his warriors and his
ship, but giving little thought to his own precarious situation.
Lashed to his harness were his swords, his pistols, and a dagger, and
in his pocket-pouch a small quantity of the concentrated rations that
form a part of the equipment of the fighting men of Barsoom. These
things together with trained muscles, high courage, and an undaunted
spirit sufficed him for whatever misadventures might lie between him
and Gathol, which lay in what direction he knew not, nor at what
distance.
The wind was falling rapidly and with it the dust that obscured the
landscape. That the storm was over he was convinced, but he chafed at
the inactivity the low visibility put upon him, nor did conditions
better materially before night fell, so that he was forced to await the
new day at the very spot at which the tempest had deposited him.
Without his sleeping silks and furs he spent a far from comfortable
night, and it was with feelings of unmixed relief that he saw the
sudden dawn burst upon him. The air was now clear and in the light of
the new day he saw an undulating plain stretching in all directions
about him, while to the northwest there were barely discernible the
outlines of low hills. Toward the southeast of Gathol was such a
country, and as Gahan surmised the direction and the velocity of the
storm to have carried him somewhere in the vicinity of the country he
thought he recognized, he assumed that Gathol lay behind the hills he
now saw, whereas, in reality, it lay far to the northeast.
It was two days before Gahan had crossed the plain and reached the
summit of the hills from which he hoped to see his own country, only to
meet at last with disappointment. Before him stretched another plain,
of even greater proportions than that he had but just crossed, and
beyond this other hills. In one material respect this plain differed
from that behind him in that it was dotted with occasional isolated
hills. Convinced, however, that Gathol lay somewhere in the direction
of his search he descended into the valley and bent his steps toward
the northwest.
For weeks Gahan of Gathol crossed valleys and hills in search of some
familiar landmark that might point his way toward his native land, but
the summit of each succeeding ridge revealed but another unfamiliar
view. He saw few animals and no men, until he finally came to the
belief that he had fallen upon that fabled area of ancient Barsoom
which lay under the curse of her olden gods--the once rich and fertile
country whose people in their pride and arrogance had denied the
deities, and whose punishment had been extermination.
And then, one day, he scaled low hills and looked into an inhabited
valley--a valley of trees and cultivated fields and plots of ground
enclosed by stone walls surrounding strange towers. He saw people
working in the fields, but he did not rush down to greet them. First he
must know more of them and whether they might be assumed to be friends
or enemies. Hidden by concealing shrubbery he crawled to a vantage
point upon a hill that projected further into the valley, and here he
lay upon his belly watching the workers closest to him. They were still
quite a distance from him and he could not be quite sure of them, but
there was something verging upon the unnatural about them. Their heads
seemed out of proportion to their bodies--too large.
For a long time he lay watching them and ever more forcibly it was
borne in upon his consciousness that they were not as he, and that it
would be rash to trust himself among them. Presently he saw a couple
appear from the nearest enclosure and slowly approach those who were
working nearest to the hill where he lay in hiding. Immediately he was