The warlord of Mars
But an instant did I crush that dear form to me ere Salensus Oll,
trembling with rage and jealousy, shouldered his way to us.
“Seize the man,” he cried to his warriors, and a hundred ruthless hands
tore us apart.
Well it was for the nobles of the court of Okar that John Carter had
been disarmed. As it was, a dozen of them felt the weight of my
clenched fists, and I had fought my way half up the steps before the
throne to which Salensus Oll had carried Dejah Thoris ere ever they
could stop me.
Then I went down, fighting, beneath a half-hundred warriors; but before
they had battered me into unconsciousness I heard that from the lips of
Dejah Thoris that made all my suffering well worth while.
Standing there beside the great tyrant, who clutched her by the arm,
she pointed to where I fought alone against such awful odds.
“Think you, Salensus Oll, that the wife of such as he is,” she cried,
“would ever dishonor his memory, were he a thousand times dead, by
mating with a lesser mortal? Lives there upon any world such another as
John Carter, Prince of Helium? Lives there another man who could fight
his way back and forth across a warlike planet, facing savage beasts
and hordes of savage men, for the love of a woman?
“I, Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, am his. He fought for me and won
me. If you be a brave man you will honor the bravery that is his, and
you will not kill him. Make him a slave if you will, Salensus Oll; but
spare his life. I would rather be a slave with such as he than be Queen
of Okar.”
“Neither slave nor queen dictates to Salensus Oll,” replied the Jeddak
of Jeddaks. “John Carter shall die a natural death in the Pit of
Plenty, and the day he dies Dejah Thoris shall become my queen.”
I did not hear her reply, for it was then that a blow upon my head
brought unconsciousness, and when I recovered my senses only a handful
of guardsmen remained in the audience chamber with me. As I opened my
eyes they goaded me with the points of their swords and bade me rise.
Then they led me through long corridors to a court far toward the
center of the palace.
In the center of the court was a deep pit, near the edge of which stood
half a dozen other guardsmen, awaiting me. One of them carried a long
rope in his hands, which he commenced to make ready as we approached.
We had come to within fifty feet of these men when I felt a sudden
strange and rapid pricking sensation in one of my fingers.
For a moment I was nonplused by the odd feeling, and then there came to
me recollection of that which in the stress of my adventure I had
entirely forgotten—the gift ring of Prince Talu of Marentina.
Instantly I looked toward the group we were nearing, at the same time
raising my left hand to my forehead, that the ring might be visible to
one who sought it. Simultaneously one of the waiting warriors raised
his left hand, ostensibly to brush back his hair, and upon one of his
fingers I saw the duplicate of my own ring.
A quick look of intelligence passed between us, after which I kept my
eyes turned away from the warrior and did not look at him again, for
fear that I might arouse the suspicion of the Okarians. When we reached
the edge of the pit I saw that it was very deep, and presently I
realized I was soon to judge just how far it extended below the surface
of the court, for he who held the rope passed it about my body in such
a way that it could be released from above at any time; and then, as
all the warriors grasped it, he pushed me forward, and I fell into the
yawning abyss.
After the first jerk as I reached the end of the rope that had been
paid out to let me fall below the pit’s edge they lowered me quickly
but smoothly. The moment before the plunge, while two or three of the
men had been assisting in adjusting the rope about me, one of them had
brought his mouth close to my cheek, and in the brief interval before I
was cast into the forbidding hole he breathed a single word into my
ear:
“Courage!”
The pit, which my imagination had pictured as bottomless, proved to be
not more than a hundred feet in depth; but as its walls were smoothly
polished it might as well have been a thousand feet, for I could never
hope to escape without outside assistance.
For a day I was left in darkness; and then, quite suddenly, a brilliant
light illumined my strange cell. I was reasonably hungry and thirsty by
this time, not having tasted food or drink since the day prior to my
incarceration.
To my amazement I found the sides of the pit, that I had thought
smooth, lined with shelves, upon which were the most delicious viands
and liquid refreshments that Okar afforded.
With an exclamation of delight I sprang forward to partake of some of
the welcome food, but ere ever I reached it the light was extinguished,
and, though I groped my way about the chamber, my hands came in contact
with nothing beside the smooth, hard wall that I had felt on my first
examination of my prison.
Immediately the pangs of hunger and thirst began to assail me. Where
before I had had but a mild craving for food and drink, I now actually
suffered for want of it, and all because of the tantalizing sight that
I had had of food almost within my grasp.
Once more darkness and silence enveloped me, a silence that was broken
only by a single mocking laugh.
For another day nothing occurred to break the monotony of my
imprisonment or relieve the suffering superinduced by hunger and
thirst. Slowly the pangs became less keen, as suffering deadened the
activity of certain nerves; and then the light flashed on once again,
and before me stood an array of new and tempting dishes, with great
bottles of clear water and flagons of refreshing wine, upon the outside
of which the cold sweat of condensation stood.
Again, with the hunger madness of a wild beast, I sprang forward to
seize those tempting dishes; but, as before, the light went out and I
came to a sudden stop against a hard wall.
Then the mocking laugh rang out for a second time.
The Pit of Plenty!
Ah, what a cruel mind must have devised this exquisite, hellish
torture! Day after day was the thing repeated, until I was on the verge
of madness; and then, as I had done in the pits of the Warhoons, I took
a new, firm hold upon my reason and forced it back into the channels of
sanity.
By sheer will-power I regained control over my tottering mentality, and
so successful was I that the next time that the light came I sat quite
still and looked indifferently at the fresh and tempting food almost
within my reach. Glad I was that I had done so, for it gave me an
opportunity to solve the seeming mystery of those vanishing banquets.
As I made no move to reach the food, the torturers left the light
turned on in the hope that at last I could refrain no longer from
giving them the delicious thrill of enjoyment that my former futile
efforts to obtain it had caused.
And as I sat scrutinizing the laden shelves I presently saw how the
thing was accomplished, and so simple was it that I wondered I had not
guessed it before. The wall of my prison was of clearest glass—behind
the glass were the tantalizing viands.
After nearly an hour the light went out, but this time there was no
mocking laughter—at least not upon the part of my tormentors; but I, to
be at quits with them, gave a low laugh that none might mistake for the
cackle of a maniac.
Nine days passed, and I was weak from hunger and thirst, but no longer
suffering—I was past that. Then, down through the darkness above, a
little parcel fell to the floor at my side.
Indifferently I groped for it, thinking it but some new invention of my
jailers to add to my sufferings.
At last I found it—a tiny package wrapped in paper, at the end of a
strong and slender cord. As I opened it a few lozenges fell to the
floor. As I gathered them up, feeling of them and smelling of them, I
discovered that they were tablets of concentrated food such as are
quite common in all parts of Barsoom.
Poison! I thought.
Well, what of it? Why not end my misery now rather than drag out a few
more wretched days in this dark pit? Slowly I raised one of the little
pellets to my lips.
“Good-bye, my Dejah Thoris!” I breathed. “I have lived for you and
fought for you, and now my next dearest wish is to be realized, for I
shall die for you,” and, taking the morsel in my mouth, I devoured it.
One by one I ate them all, nor ever did anything taste better than
those tiny bits of nourishment, within which I knew must lie the seeds
of death—possibly of some hideous, torturing death.
As I sat quietly upon the floor of my prison, waiting for the end, my
fingers by accident came in contact with the bit of paper in which the
things had been wrapped; and as I idly played with it, my mind roaming
far back into the past, that I might live again for a few brief moments
before I died some of the many happy moments of a long and happy life,
I became aware of strange protuberances upon the smooth surface of the
parchment-like substance in my hands.
For a time they carried no special significance to my mind—I merely was
mildly wondrous that they were there; but at last they seemed to take
form, and then I realized that there was but a single line of them,
like writing.
Now, more interestedly, my fingers traced and retraced them. There were
four separate and distinct combinations of raised lines. Could it be
that these were four words, and that they were intended to carry a
message to me?
The more I thought of it the more excited I became, until my fingers
raced madly back and forth over those bewildering little hills and
valleys upon that bit of paper.
But I could make nothing of them, and at last I decided that my very
haste was preventing me from solving the mystery. Then I took it more
slowly. Again and again my forefinger traced the first of those four
combinations.
Martian writing is rather difficult to explain to an Earth man—it is
something of a cross between shorthand and picture-writing, and is an
entirely different language from the spoken language of Mars.
Upon Barsoom there is but a single oral language.
It is spoken today by every race and nation, just as it was at the
beginning of human life upon Barsoom. It has grown with the growth of
the planet’s learning and scientific achievements, but so ingenious a
thing it is that new words to express new thoughts or describe new
conditions or discoveries form themselves—no other word could explain
the thing that a new word is required for other than the word that
naturally falls to it, and so, no matter how far removed two nations or
races, their spoken languages are identical.
Not so their written languages, however. No two nations have the same
written language, and often cities of the same nation have a written
language that differs greatly from that of the nation to which they
belong.
Thus it was that the signs upon the paper, if in reality they were
words, baffled me for some time; but at last I made out the first one.
It was “courage,” and it was written in the letters of Marentina.
Courage!
That was the word the yellow guardsman had whispered in my ear as I
stood upon the verge of the Pit of Plenty.
The message must be from him, and he I knew was a friend.
With renewed hope I bent my every energy to the deciphering of the
balance of the message, and at last success rewarded my endeavor—I had
read the four words:
“Courage! Follow the rope.”
“FOLLOW THE ROPE”
What could it mean?
“Follow the rope.” What rope?
Presently I recalled the cord that had been attached to the parcel when
it fell at my side, and after a little groping my hand came in contact
with it again. It depended from above, and when I pulled upon it I