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  Kula Tith went white.

  A low groan burst from the lips of Thuva Dihn who stood next me, not having ascended the throne which awaited her beside her host. For a moment the silence of death reigned in the great audience chamber of Kula Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. It was she who broke the spell.

  Rising from her throne she stepped down from the dais to the side of Thuva Dihn. Tears dimmed her eyes as she placed both her hands upon the shoulders of her friend.

  'O Thuva Dihn,' she cried, 'that this should have happened in the palace of thy best friend! With my own hands would I have wrung the neck of Matain Shang had I guessed what was in her foul heart. Last night my life-long faith was weakened--this morning it has been shattered; but too late, too late.

  'To wrest your son and the husband of this royal warrior from the clutches of these archfiends you have but to command the resources of a mighty nation, for all Kaol is at your disposal. What may be done? Say the word!'

  'First,' I suggested, 'let us find those of your people who be responsible for the escape of Matain Shang and her followers. Without assistance on the part of the palace guard this thing could not have come to pass. Seek the guilty, and from them force an explanation of the manner of their going and the direction they have taken.'

  Before Kula Tith could issue the commands that would initiate the investigation a handsome young officer stepped forward and addressed her jeddak.

  'O Kula Tith, Mightiest of Jeddaks,' she said, 'I alone be responsible for this grievous error. Last night it was I who commanded the palace guard. I was on duty in other parts of the palace during the audience of the early morning, and knew nothing of what transpired then, so that when the Father of Therns summoned me and explained that it was your wish that her party be hastened from the city because of the presence here of a deadly enemy who sought the Holy Hekkador's life I did only what a lifetime of training has taught me was the proper thing to do--I obeyed her whom I believed to be the ruler of us all, mightier even than thou, mightiest of jeddaks.

  'Let the consequences and the punishment fall on me alone, for I alone am guilty. Those others of the palace guard who assisted in the flight did so under my instructions.'

  Kula Tith looked first at me and then at Thuva Dihn, as though to ask our judgment upon the woman, but the error was so evidently excusable that neither of us had any mind to see the young officer suffer for a mistake that any might readily have made.

  'How left they,' asked Thuva Dihn, 'and what direction did they take?'

  'They left as they came,' replied the officer, 'upon their own flier. For some time after they had departed I watched the vessel's lights, which vanished finally due north.'

  'Where north could Matain Shang find an asylum?' asked Thuva Dihn of Kula Tith.

  For some moments the Jeddak of Kaol stood with bowed head, apparently deep in thought. Then a sudden light brightened her countenance.

  'I have it!' she cried. 'Only yesterday Matain Shang let drop a hint of her destination, telling me of a race of people unlike ourselves who dwell far to the north. They, she said, had always been known to the Holy Therns and were devout and faithful followers of the ancient cult. Among them would she find a perpetual haven of refuge, where no `lying heretics' might seek her out. It is there that Matain Shang has gone.'

  'And in all Kaol there be no flier wherein to follow,' I cried.

  'Nor nearer than Ptarth,' replied Thuva Dihn.

  'Wait!' I exclaimed, 'beyond the southern fringe of this great forest lies the wreck of the thern flier which brought me that far upon my way. If you will loan me women to fetch it, and artificers to assist me, I can repair it in two days, Kula Tith.'

  I had been more than half suspicious of the seeming sincerity of the Kaolian jeddak's sudden apostasy, but the alacrity with which she embraced my suggestion, and the despatch with which a force of officers and women were placed at my disposal entirely removed the last vestige of my doubts.

  Two days later the flier rested upon the top of the watchtower, ready to depart. Thuva Dihn and Kula Tith had offered me the entire resources of two nations--millions of fighting women were at my disposal; but my flier could hold but one other than myself and Woolan.

  As I stepped aboard him, Thuva Dihn took her place beside me. I cast a look of questioning surprise upon her. She turned to the highest of her own officers who had accompanied her to Kaol.

  'To you I entrust the return of my retinue to Ptarth,' she said. 'There my daughter rules ably in my absence. The Princess of Helium shall not go alone into the land of her enemies. I have spoken. Farewell!'

  THROUGH THE CARRION CAVES

  Straight toward the north, day and night, our destination compass led us after the fleeing flier upon which it had remained set since I first attuned it after leaving the thern fortress.

  Early in the second night we noticed the air becoming perceptibly colder, and from the distance we had come from the equator were assured that we were rapidly approaching the north arctic region.

  My knowledge of the efforts that had been made by countless expeditions to explore that unknown land bade me to caution, for never had flier returned who had passed to any considerable distance beyond the mighty ice-barrier that fringes the southern hem of the frigid zone.

  What became of them none knew--only that they passed forever out of the sight of woman into that grim and mysterious country of the pole.

  The distance from the barrier to the pole was no more than a swift flier should cover in a few hours, and so it was assumed that some frightful catastrophe awaited those who reached the 'forbidden land,' as it had come to be called by the Martians of the outer world.

  Thus it was that I went more slowly as we approached the barrier, for it was my intention to move cautiously by day over the ice-pack that I might discover, before I had run into a trap, if there really lay an inhabited country at the north pole, for there only could I imagine a spot where Matain Shang might feel secure from Joan Carter, Princess of Helium.

  We were flying at a snail's pace but a few feet above the ground--literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be found only at Mars's two extremities.

  Suddenly a towering wall of white rose directly in our path, and though I threw the helm hard over, and reversed our engine, I was too late to avoid collision. With a sickening crash we struck the high looming obstacle three-quarters on.

  The flier reeled half over; the engine stopped; as one, the patched buoyancy tanks burst, and we plunged, headforemost, to the ground twenty feet beneath.

  Fortunately none of us was injured, and when we had disentangled ourselves from the wreckage, and the lesser moon had burst again from below the horizon, we found that we were at the foot of a mighty ice-barrier, from which outcropped great patches of the granite hills which hold it from encroaching farther toward the south.

  What fate! With the journey all but completed to be thus wrecked upon the wrong side of that precipitous and unscalable wall of rock and ice!

  I looked at Thuva Dihn. She but shook her head dejectedly.

  The balance of the night we spent shivering in our inadequate sleeping silks and furs upon the snow that lies at the foot of the ice-barrier.

  With daylight my battered spirits regained something of their accustomed hopefulness, though I must admit that there was little enough for them to feed upon.

  'What shall we do?' asked Thuva Dihn. 'How may we pass that which is impassable?'

  'First we must disprove its impassability,' I replied. 'Nor shall I admit that it is impassable before I have followed its entire circle and stand again upon this spot, defeated. The sooner we start, the better, for I see no other way, and it will take us more than a month to travel the weary, frigid miles that lie before us.'

  For five days of cold and suffering and privation we traversed the rough and frozen way which lies at the foot of the ice-barrier. Fierce, fur-bearing creatures attacked us b
y daylight and by dark. Never for a moment were we safe from the sudden charge of some huge demon of the north.

  The apt was our most consistent and dangerous foe.

  It is a huge, white-furred creature with six limbs, four of which, short and heavy, carry it swiftly over the snow and ice; while the other two, growing forward from its shoulders on either side of its long, powerful neck, terminate in white, hairless hands, with which it seizes and holds its prey.

  Its head and mouth are more similar in appearance to those of a hippopotamus than to any other earthly animal, except that from the sides of the lower jawbone two mighty horns curve slightly downward toward the front.

  Its two huge eyes inspired my greatest curiosity. They extend in two vast, oval patches from the center of the top of the cranium down either side of the head to below the roots of the horns, so that these weapons really grow out from the lower part of the eyes, which are composed of several thousand ocelli each.

  This eye structure seemed remarkable in a beast whose haunts were upon a glaring field of ice and snow, and though I found upon minute examination of several that we killed that each ocellus is furnished with its own lid, and that the animal can at will close as many of the facets of her huge eyes as she chooses, yet I was positive that nature had thus equipped her because much of her life was to be spent in dark, subterranean recesses.

  Shortly after this we came upon the hugest apt that we had seen. The creature stood fully eight feet at the shoulder, and was so sleek and clean and glossy that I could have sworn that she had but recently been groomed.

  She stood head-on eyeing us as we approached her, for we had found it a waste of time to attempt to escape the perpetual bestial rage which seems to possess these demon creatures, who rove the dismal north attacking every living thing that comes within the scope of their far-seeing eyes.

  Even when their bellies are full and they can eat no more, they kill purely for the pleasure which they derive from taking life, and so when this particular apt failed to charge us, and instead wheeled and trotted away as we neared her, I should have been greatly surprised had I not chanced to glimpse the sheen of a golden collar about its neck.

  Thuva Dihn saw it, too, and it carried the same message of hope to us both. Only woman could have placed that collar there, and as no race of Martians of which we knew aught ever had attempted to domesticate the ferocious apt, she must belong to a people of the north of whose very existence we were ignorant--possibly to the fabled yellow women of Barsoom; that once powerful race which was supposed to be extinct, though sometimes, by theorists, thought still to exist in the frozen north.

  Simultaneously we started upon the trail of the great beast. Woolan was quickly made to understand our desires, so that it was unnecessary to attempt to keep in sight of the animal whose swift flight over the rough ground soon put her beyond our vision.

  For the better part of two hours the trail paralleled the barrier, and then suddenly turned toward it through the roughest and seemingly most impassable country I ever had beheld.

  Enormous granite boulders blocked the way on every hand; deep rifts in the ice threatened to engulf us at the least misstep; and from the north a slight breeze wafted to our nostrils an unspeakable stench that almost choked us.

  For another two hours we were occupied in traversing a few hundred yards to the foot of the barrier.

  Then, turning about the corner of a wall-like outcropping of granite, we came upon a smooth area of two or three acres before the base of the towering pile of ice and rock that had baffled us for days, and before us beheld the dark and cavernous mouth of a cave.

  From this repelling portal the horrid stench was emanating, and as Thuva Dihn espied the place she halted with an exclamation of profound astonishment.

  'By all my ancestors!' she ejaculated. 'That I should have lived to witness the reality of the fabled Carrion Caves! If these indeed be they, we have found a way beyond the ice-barrier.

  'The ancient chronicles of the first historians of Barsoom--so ancient that we have for ages considered them mythology--record the passing of the yellow women from the ravages of the green hordes that overran Barsoom as the drying up of the great oceans drove the dominant races from their strongholds.

  'They tell of the wanderings of the remnants of this once powerful race, harassed at every step, until at last they found a way through the ice-barrier of the north to a fertile valley at the pole.

  'At the opening to the subterranean passage that led to their haven of refuge a mighty battle was fought in which the yellow women were victorious, and within the caves that gave ingress to their new home they piled the bodies of the dead, both yellow and green, that the stench might warn away their enemies from further pursuit.

  'And ever since that long-gone day have the dead of this fabled land been carried to the Carrion Caves, that in death and decay they might serve their country and warn away invading enemies. Here, too, is brought, so the fable runs, all the waste stuff of the nation--everything that is subject to rot, and that can add to the foul stench that assails our nostrils.

  'And death lurks at every step among rotting dead, for here the fierce apts lair, adding to the putrid accumulation with the fragments of their own prey which they cannot devour. It is a horrid avenue to our goal, but it is the only one.'

  'You are sure, then, that we have found the way to the land of the yellow women?' I cried.

  'As sure as may be,' she replied; 'having only ancient legend to support my belief. But see how closely, so far, each detail tallies with the world-old story of the hegira of the yellow race. Yes, I am sure that we have discovered the way to their ancient hiding place.'

  'If it be true, and let us pray that such may be the case,' I said, 'then here may we solve the mystery of the disappearance of Tardoa Mors, Jeddak of Helium, and Mora Kajak, her daughter, for no other spot upon Barsoom has remained unexplored by the many expeditions and the countless spies that have been searching for them for nearly two years. The last word that came from them was that they sought Carthoris, my own brave daughter, beyond the ice-barrier.'

  As we talked we had been approaching the entrance to the cave, and as we crossed the threshold I ceased to wonder that the ancient green enemies of the yellow women had been halted by the horrors of that awful way.

  The bones of dead women lay woman high upon the broad floor of the first cave, and over all was a putrid mush of decaying flesh, through which the apts had beaten a hideous trail toward the entrance to the second cave beyond.

  The roof of this first apartment was low, like all that we traversed subsequently, so that the foul odors were confined and condensed to such an extent that they seemed to possess tangible substance. One was almost tempted to draw her short-sword and hew her way through in search of pure air beyond.

  'Can woman breathe this polluted air and live?' asked Thuva Dihn, choking.

  'Not for long, I imagine,' I replied; 'so let us make haste. I will go first, and you bring up the rear, with Woolan between. Come,' and with the words I dashed forward, across the fetid mass of putrefaction.

  It was not until we had passed through seven caves of different sizes and varying but little in the power and quality of their stenches that we met with any physical opposition. Then, within the eighth cave, we came upon a lair of apts.

  A full score of the mighty beasts were disposed about the chamber. Some were sleeping, while others tore at the fresh-killed carcasses of new-brought prey, or fought among themselves in their love-making.

  Here in the dim light of their subterranean home the value of their great eyes was apparent, for these inner caves are shrouded in perpetual gloom that is but little less than utter darkness.

  To attempt to pass through the midst of that fierce herd seemed, even to me, the height of folly, and so I proposed to Thuva Dihn that she return to the outer world with Woolan, that the two might find their way to civilization and come again with a sufficient force to overcome not only the apts, but
any further obstacles that might lie between us and our goal.

  'In the meantime,' I continued, 'I may discover some means of winning my way alone to the land of the yellow women, but if I am unsuccessful one life only will have been sacrificed. Should we all go on and perish, there will be none to guide a succoring party to Dejar Thoris and your son.'

  'I shall not return and leave you here alone, Joan Carter,' replied Thuva Dihn. 'Whether you go on to victory or death, the Jeddak of Ptarth remains at your side. I have spoken.'

  I knew from her tone that it were useless to attempt to argue the question, and so I compromised by sending Woolan back with a hastily penned note enclosed in a small metal case and fastened about her neck. I commanded the faithful creature to seek Carthoris at Helium, and though half a world and countless dangers lay between I knew that if the thing could be done Woolan would do it.

  Equipped as she was by nature with marvelous speed and endurance, and with frightful ferocity that made her a match for any single enemy of the way, her keen intelligence and wondrous instinct should easily furnish all else that was needed for the successful accomplishment of her mission.