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  Naked and unarmed, as I was, my end would have been both speedy and horrible at the hands of these cruel creatures had I had time to put my resolve into execution, but at the moment of the shriek each member of the herd turned in the direction from which the sound seemed to come, and at the same instant every particular snake-like hair upon their heads rose stiffly perpendicular as if each had been a sentient organism looking or listening for the source or meaning of the wail. And indeed the latter proved to be the truth, for this strange growth upon the craniums of the plant women of Barsoom represents the thousand ears of these hideous creatures, the last remnant of the strange race which sprang from the original Tree of Life.

  Instantly every eye turned toward one member of the herd, a large fellow who evidently was the leader. A strange purring sound issued from the mouth in the palm of one of her hands, and at the same time she started rapidly toward the bluff, followed by the entire herd.

  Their speed and method of locomotion were both remarkable, springing as they did in great leaps of twenty or thirty feet, much after the manner of a kangaroo.

  They were rapidly disappearing when it occurred to me to follow them, and so, hurling caution to the winds, I sprang across the meadow in their wake with leaps and bounds even more prodigious than their own, for the muscles of an athletic Earth woman produce remarkable results when pitted against the lesser gravity and air pressure of Mars.

  Their way led directly towards the apparent source of the river at the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point I found the meadow dotted with huge boulders that the ravages of time had evidently dislodged from the towering crags above.

  For this reason I came quite close to the cause of the disturbance before the scene broke upon my horrified gaze. As I topped a great boulder I saw the herd of plant women surrounding a little group of perhaps five or six green women and men of Barsoom.

  That I was indeed upon Mars I now had no doubt, for here were members of the wild hordes that people the dead sea bottoms and deserted cities of that dying planet.

  Here were the great males towering in all the majesty of their imposing height; here were the gleaming white tusks protruding from their massive lower jaws to a point near the centre of their foreheads, the laterally placed, protruding eyes with which they could look forward or backward, or to either side without turning their heads, here the strange antennae-like ears rising from the tops of their foreheads; and the additional pair of arms extending from midway between the shoulders and the hips.

  Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornaments which denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I would have known them on the instant for what they were, for where else in all the universe is their like duplicated?

  There were two women and four females in the party and their ornaments denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green women of Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single historic instance when the great Tara Tarkas of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue Dejar Thoris, Prince of Helium, from the clutches of Thana Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordes associated in other than mortal combat.

  But now they stood back to back, facing, in wide-eyed amazement, the very evidently hostile demonstrations of a common enemy.

  Both women and men were armed with long-swords and daggers, but no firearms were in evidence, else it had been short shrift for the gruesome plant women of Barsoom.

  Presently the leader of the plant women charged the little party, and her method of attack was as remarkable as it was effective, and by its very strangeness was the more potent, since in the science of the green warriors there was no defence for this singular manner of attack, the like of which it soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar with as they were with the monstrosities which confronted them.

  The plant woman charged to within a dozen feet of the party and then, with a bound, rose as though to pass directly above their heads. Her powerful tail was raised high to one side, and as she passed close above them she brought it down in one terrific sweep that crushed a green warrior's skull as though it had been an eggshell.

  The balance of the frightful herd was now circling rapidly and with bewildering speed about the little knot of victims. Their prodigious bounds and the shrill, screeching purr of their uncanny mouths were well calculated to confuse and terrorize their prey, so that as two of them leaped simultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep of those awful tails met with no resistance and two more green Martians went down to an ignoble death.

  There were now but one warrior and two females left, and it seemed that it could be but a matter of seconds ere these, also, lay dead upon the scarlet sward.

  But as two more of the plant women charged, the warrior, who was now prepared by the experiences of the past few minutes, swung her mighty long-sword aloft and met the hurtling bulk with a clean cut that clove one of the plant women from chin to groin.

  The other, however, dealt a single blow with her cruel tail that laid both of the females crushed corpses upon the ground.

  As the green warrior saw the last of her companions go down and at the same time perceived that the entire herd was charging her in a body, she rushed boldly to meet them, swinging her long-sword in the terrific manner that I had so often seen the women of her kind wield it in their ferocious and almost continual warfare among their own race.

  Cutting and hewing to right and left, she laid an open path straight through the advancing plant women, and then commenced a mad race for the forest, in the shelter of which she evidently hoped that she might find a haven of refuge.

  She had turned for that portion of the forest which abutted on the cliffs, and thus the mad race was taking the entire party farther and farther from the boulder where I lay concealed.

  As I had watched the noble fight which the great warrior had put up against such enormous odds my heart had swelled in admiration for her, and acting as I am wont to do, more upon impulse than after mature deliberation, I instantly sprang from my sheltering rock and bounded quickly toward the bodies of the dead green Martians, a well-defined plan of action already formed.

  Half a dozen great leaps brought me to the spot, and another instant saw me again in my stride in quick pursuit of the hideous monsters that were rapidly gaining on the fleeing warrior, but this time I grasped a mighty long-sword in my hand and in my heart was the old blood lust of the fighting woman, and a red mist swam before my eyes and I felt my lips respond to my heart in the old smile that has ever marked me in the midst of the joy of battle.

  Swift as I was I was none too soon, for the green warrior had been overtaken ere she had made half the distance to the forest, and now she stood with her back to a boulder, while the herd, temporarily balked, hissed and screeched about her.

  With their single eyes in the centre of their heads and every eye turned upon their prey, they did not note my soundless approach, so that I was upon them with my great long-sword and four of them lay dead ere they knew that I was among them.

  For an instant they recoiled before my terrific onslaught, and in that instant the green warrior rose to the occasion and, springing to my side, laid to the right and left of her as I had never seen but one other warrior do, with great circling strokes that formed a figure eight about her and that never stopped until none stood living to oppose her, her keen blade passing through flesh and bone and metal as though each had been alike thin air.

  As we bent to the slaughter, far above us rose that shrill, weird cry which I had heard once before, and which had called the herd to the attack upon their victims. Again and again it rose, but we were too much engaged with the fierce and powerful creatures about us to attempt to search out even with our eyes the author of the horrid notes.

  Great tails lashed in frenzied anger about us, razor-like talons cut
our limbs and bodies, and a green and sticky syrup, such as oozes from a crushed caterpillar, smeared us from head to foot, for every cut and thrust of our longswords brought spurts of this stuff upon us from the severed arteries of the plant women, through which it courses in its sluggish viscidity in lieu of blood.

  Once I felt the great weight of one of the monsters upon my back and as keen talons sank into my flesh I experienced the frightful sensation of moist lips sucking the lifeblood from the wounds to which the claws still clung.

  I was very much engaged with a ferocious fellow who was endeavouring to reach my throat from in front, while two more, one on either side, were lashing viciously at me with their tails.

  The green warrior was much put to it to hold her own, and I felt that the unequal struggle could last but a moment longer when the huge fellow discovered my plight, and tearing herself from those that surrounded her, she raked the assailant from my back with a single sweep of her blade, and thus relieved I had little difficulty with the others.

  Once together, we stood almost back to back against the great boulder, and thus the creatures were prevented from soaring above us to deliver their deadly blows, and as we were easily their match while they remained upon the ground, we were making great headway in dispatching what remained of them when our attention was again attracted by the shrill wail of the caller above our heads.

  This time I glanced up, and far above us upon a little natural balcony on the face of the cliff stood a strange figure of a woman shrieking out her shrill signal, the while she waved one hand in the direction of the river's mouth as though beckoning to some one there, and with the other pointed and gesticulated toward us.

  A glance in the direction toward which she was looking was sufficient to apprise me of her aims and at the same time to fill me with the dread of dire apprehension, for, streaming in from all directions across the meadow, from out of the forest, and from the far distance of the flat land across the river, I could see converging upon us a hundred different lines of wildly leaping creatures such as we were now engaged with, and with them some strange new monsters which ran with great swiftness, now erect and now upon all fours.

  'It will be a great death,' I said to my companion. 'Look!'

  As she shot a quick glance in the direction I indicated she smiled.

  'We may at least die fighting and as great warriors should, Joan Carter,' she replied.

  We had just finished the last of our immediate antagonists as she spoke, and I turned in surprised wonderment at the sound of my name.

  And there before my astonished eyes I beheld the greatest of the green women of Barsoom; their shrewdest statesman, their mightiest general, my great and good friend, Tara Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark.

  CHAPTER II

  A FOREST BATTLE

  Tara Tarkas and I found no time for an exchange of experiences as we stood there before the great boulder surrounded by the corpses of our grotesque assailants, for from all directions down the broad valley was streaming a perfect torrent of terrifying creatures in response to the weird call of the strange figure far above us.

  'Come,' cried Tara Tarkas, 'we must make for the cliffs. There lies our only hope of even temporary escape; there we may find a cave or a narrow ledge which two may defend for ever against this motley, unarmed horde.'

  Together we raced across the scarlet sward, I timing my speed that I might not outdistance my slower companion. We had, perhaps, three hundred yards to cover between our boulder and the cliffs, and then to search out a suitable shelter for our stand against the terrifying things that were pursuing us.

  They were rapidly overhauling us when Tara Tarkas cried to me to hasten ahead and discover, if possible, the sanctuary we sought. The suggestion was a good one, for thus many valuable minutes might be saved to us, and, throwing every ounce of my earthly muscles into the effort, I cleared the remaining distance between myself and the cliffs in great leaps and bounds that put me at their base in a moment.

  The cliffs rose perpendicular directly from the almost level sward of the valley. There was no accumulation of fallen debris, forming a more or less rough ascent to them, as is the case with nearly all other cliffs I have ever seen. The scattered boulders that had fallen from above and lay upon or partly buried in the turf, were the only indication that any disintegration of the massive, towering pile of rocks ever had taken place.

  My first cursory inspection of the face of the cliffs filled my heart with forebodings, since nowhere could I discern, except where the weird herald stood still shrieking her shrill summons, the faintest indication of even a bare foothold upon the lofty escarpment.

  To my right the bottom of the cliff was lost in the dense foliage of the forest, which terminated at its very foot, rearing its gorgeous foliage fully a thousand feet against its stern and forbidding neighbour.

  To the left the cliff ran, apparently unbroken, across the head of the broad valley, to be lost in the outlines of what appeared to be a range of mighty mountains that skirted and confined the valley in every direction.

  Perhaps a thousand feet from me the river broke, as it seemed, directly from the base of the cliffs, and as there seemed not the remotest chance for escape in that direction I turned my attention again toward the forest.

  The cliffs towered above me a good five thousand feet. The sun was not quite upon them and they loomed a dull yellow in their own shade. Here and there they were broken with streaks and patches of dusky red, green, and occasional areas of white quartz.

  Altogether they were very beautiful, but I fear that I did not regard them with a particularly appreciative eye on this, my first inspection of them.

  Just then I was absorbed in them only as a medium of escape, and so, as my gaze ran quickly, time and again, over their vast expanse in search of some cranny or crevice, I came suddenly to loathe them as the prisoner must loathe the cruel and impregnable walls of her dungeon.

  Tara Tarkas was approaching me rapidly, and still more rapidly came the awful horde at her heels.

  It seemed the forest now or nothing, and I was just on the point of motioning Tara Tarkas to follow me in that direction when the sun passed the cliff's zenith, and as the bright rays touched the dull surface it burst out into a million scintillant lights of burnished gold, of flaming red, of soft greens, and gleaming whites--a more gorgeous and inspiring spectacle human eye has never rested upon.

  The face of the entire cliff was, as later inspection conclusively proved, so shot with veins and patches of solid gold as to quite present the appearance of a solid wall of that precious metal except where it was broken by outcroppings of ruby, emerald, and diamond boulders--a faint and alluring indication of the vast and unguessable riches which lay deeply buried behind the magnificent surface.

  But what caught my most interested attention at the moment that the sun's rays set the cliff's face a-shimmer, was the several black spots which now appeared quite plainly in evidence high across the gorgeous wall close to the forest's top, and extending apparently below and behind the branches.

  Almost immediately I recognised them for what they were, the dark openings of caves entering the solid walls--possible avenues of escape or temporary shelter, could we but reach them.

  There was but a single way, and that led through the mighty, towering trees upon our right. That I could scale them I knew full well, but Tara Tarkas, with her mighty bulk and enormous weight, would find it a task possibly quite beyond her prowess or her skill, for Martians are at best but poor climbers. Upon the entire surface of that ancient planet I never before had seen a hill or mountain that exceeded four thousand feet in height above the dead sea bottoms, and as the ascent was usually gradual, nearly to their summits they presented but few opportunities for the practice of climbing. Nor would the Martians have embraced even such opportunities as might present themselves, for they could always find a circuitous route about the base of any eminence, and these roads they preferred and followed in preference to the shorter but mor
e arduous ways.

  However, there was nothing else to consider than an attempt to scale the trees contiguous to the cliff in an effort to reach the caves above.

  The Thark grasped the possibilities and the difficulties of the plan at once, but there was no alternative, and so we set out rapidly for the trees nearest the cliff.

  Our relentless pursuers were now close to us, so close that it seemed that it would be an utter impossibility for the Jeddak of Thark to reach the forest in advance of them, nor was there any considerable will in the efforts that Tara Tarkas made, for the green women of Barsoom do not relish flight, nor ever before had I seen one fleeing from death in whatsoever form it might have confronted her. But that Tara Tarkas was the bravest of the brave she had proven thousands of times; yes, tens of thousands in countless mortal combats with women and beasts. And so I knew that there was another reason than fear of death behind her flight, as she knew that a greater power than pride or honour spurred me to escape these fierce destroyers. In my case it was love--love of the divine Dejar Thoris; and the cause of the Thark's great and sudden love of life I could not fathom, for it is oftener that they seek death than life--these strange, cruel, loveless, unhappy people.