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This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Jeffrey Ouyang-Zhang, UT Austin (2) Daniel J. Diaz, UT Austin (3) Adam R. Klivans, UT Austin (4) Philipp Krähenbühl, UT Austin Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Related Works Preliminary Methodology Results Limitations Conclusion, Acknowledgements, & References Experimental Setting & Additional Results 7 Conclusion We present a method that efficiently scales thermodynamic stability prediction from single mutations to higher-order mutations. Our key insight is that the effects of mutations on the same protein are correlated. Thus, for a target protein, it suffices to run a deep backbone once and decode the effect of all mutations simultaneously using a shallow decoder. With the AlphaFold model as our backbone, our method outperforms existing methods on a variety of single and multiple mutation benchmarks. Our method scales to millions of mutations with minimal computational overhead and runs in a fraction of the time it would take prior works. 8 Acknowledgements This work is supported by the NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (IFML). References [1] Randomization of genes by pcr mutagenesis. Genome research 2(1), 28–33 (1992) 2 [2] Adams, J.P., Brown, M.J., Diaz-Rodriguez, A., Lloyd, R.C., Roiban, G.D.: Biocatalysis: A Pharma Perspective. 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Predicting a Protein’s Stability
under a Million Mutations: Conclusion, Acknowledgement & References

Introduction Would you like to see Mona Lisa smile like a witch? Or would you like the girl with the pearl earring to wink and smile? Google has just dropped a video generation model named Lumiere [1] that's capable of doing all of it for you. Though it's primarily a text-to-video model, it's able to do much more than that. Given a reference image with a prompt, it can stylize your videos by copying the style of the reference image to your videos. You can even edit your videos with just a single prompt. The model is Lumiaire. It's even able to animate objects within a user-specified region in an image, a technique called Cinemagraphs. When it comes to inpainting, Lumiere is even able to reason about a completely missing object such as a cake in this example. It all boils down to a diffusion model with a novel space-time U-Net architecture [3]. It's a customization of the U-Net architecture to solve the problem of temporal consistency which is quite prevalent in video generation models. Visual Explanation A visual explanation of the Lumiere paper, the model architecture, and the results are available. https://youtu.be/QcYa6xxsMTU?si=IBpUqjPtj8lJDHo0&embedable=true So, What Is Temporal Consistency? We all know that videos are a sequence of images. So, let's take a sequence of images shown in the top row in the above figure. If we narrow down just one row in the image, which is indicated by the green line going from left to right, we need to see a smooth transition in the pixel values between images in the sequence. If the transition is smooth, then we won’t see a jumping effect while we are watching the video. For example, if we take Stable Video Diffusion [2], and see the video of an astronaut walking on the moon (above), we can see that his hands just disappear between frames. In other words, the temporal consistency between frames is lacking. This kind of temporal inconsistency between time and the intensity in the x direction can be plotted as the X-T Slice as highlighted in the figure above. And if there is temporal inconsistency, it is highlighted in the plot of the X-T slice. Lumiere addresses this problem by introducing a space-time diffusion model and a modified U-Net architecture present in the diffusion model. Pipeline of a Text to Video Before looking into the details, let's start with the typical pipeline of a Text-to-video generation model. These pipelines sample every 5th frame as the keyframes from the input video sequence and train a base model that can generate these keyframes at a resolution as low as 128 by 128 at just 3 frames per second. Then temporal Super Resolution is used to increase the frame rate by predicting the intermediate frames. So the frame rate now becomes 16 frames per second. The spatial resolution of these frames is then increased to say 1024 by 1024 by a spatial superresolution network (SSR) which finally leads to our generated video. The base model used in this framework is usually a diffusion model which in turn has a U-Net inside it. The Proposed Pipeline of Lumiere The proposed pipeline of Lumiere on the other hand processes all the frames at once without dropping frames. To cope with the computational cost of processing all the frames, the architecture of the base diffusion model is modified to come up with the space-time UNet architecture or STUNet. As STUNet deals with all the input frames, the need for Temporal Super Resolution or TSR is eliminated. So, the pipeline still has the spatial super-resolution or SSR. But the novelty is the introduction of MultiDiffusion. From U-Net to STUNet Let's quickly review the U-Net before looking into the space-time U-Net. The input to the U-Net is a 3 3-dimensional image with Width W, Height H, and channels RGB. After every double convolution stage of the U-Net, we apply max pooling to downsample or reduce the spatial dimension of the features. This spatial dimension reduction step is indicated by the red arrows. Similarly, during the decoder stage, there are up convolutions to increase or upsample the resolution back to the size of the input. When it comes to videos, we have an additional dimension in the input which is time. so space-time U-Net proposes to downsample and up-sample the video not only in the spatial dimension but also in the dimension of time T. This is the main idea of temporal resizing and is the main contribution of this Lumiere paper. For resizing, they use 3D pooling instead of 2D pooling as the input now has an additional dimension. Like me, you may be surprised by the simplicity of the idea. The authors themselves have mentioned in the paper: Surprisingly, this design choice has been overlooked by previous T2V models, which follows the convention to include only spatial down and up-sampling operations in the architecture, and maintain a fixed temporal resolution across the network. Implementation Let's get to some of the nuances of the implementation. They use factorized convolution introduced in this paper called Video Diffusion Models. The idea is to change each 2D convolution into a space-only 3D convolution, for instance, by changing each 3x3 convolution into a 1x3x3 convolution. For the attention, after each spatial attention block, we insert a temporal attention block that performs attention over the first axis and treats the spatial axes as batch axes. With those two changes, the factorized convolution blocks are added to the pre-trained model, and only the additional layers are trained with the pre-trained layer weights fixed. The second novelty of the paper is the MultiDiffusion introduced during the spatial superresolution. If you take the video generation models before lumiere, the spatial superresolution model takes a sequence of frames. However, the sequences were not overlapping. For example, the first 8 frames and the next 8 frames taken as input by the SSR module are separate without any overlap. But when it comes to Lumiere, the first 8 frames and the second 8 frames have an overlap of two frames. By doing this, the spatial super-resolution model seems to achieve smooth transitions between the temporal segments. This is what is referred to as multiDiffusion in the paper. Applications Coupling the two proposed techniques along with the absence of a cascaded diffusion model architecture which is prevalent in prior architectures such as imagen video, leads to quite a few varied applications. For example: The model can convert text to videos with prompts such as “an astronaut walking on planet Mars making a detour around his base” or “a dog driving a car wearing funny sunglasses.” It can convert images to videos along with a text prompt such as “A girl winking and smiling.” It can stylize generation with a reference image and a text prompt such as “a bear dancing.” Talking of Cinemagraphs, it can animate regions selected by the user such as fire or steam. It can even edit dresses that people are wearing with just a single prompt. Evaluation To evaluate the model quantitatively, the model was run through a user study where the users compared the results of the proposed model against some state-of-the-art models such as Pika, ZeroScope, or stable video diffusion. The results indicate that the users preferred the Lumiere model both in the case of text to video and image to video. Conclusion So, to conclude, other than all the promotional video stunts, such as the smiling Monalisa, the contribution of this paper is fairly simple. Put in one line, the paper introduces a downsampling of the temporal channel. This coupled with MultiDiffusion, which is nothing but having overlapped frames fed into the superresolution model, generates high-fidelity videos that are temporally consistent. What I would have liked to see is some ablation studies in the paper showing the results with and without the multiDiffusion process. That brings us to the end of this article. The next time someone talks to you about Lumiere, you know what to say in one line. I hope that provided some insight into the Lumiere model. I will see you in my next, until then, take care… References [1] Omer Bar-Tal, Hila Chefer, Omer Tov, Charles Herrmann, Roni Paiss, Shiran Zada, Ariel Ephrat, Junhwa Hur, Yuanzhen Li, Tomer Michaeli, Oliver Wang, Deqing Sun, Tali Dekel, Inbar Mosseri, (2024), arXiv preprint. A Space-Time Diffusion Model for Video Generation [2] Andreas Blattmann, Tim Dockhorn, Sumith Kulal, Daniel Mendelevitch, Maciej Kilian, Dominik Lorenz, Yam Levi, Zion English, Vikram Voleti, Adam Letts, Varun Jampani, Robin Rombach, (2023), arXiv preprint. Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets [3] Olaf Ronneberger, Philipp Fischer and Thomas Brox, (2015), International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention. U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation Also published here

Google Unveils Its Most Promising Text-to-Video Model Yet: Lumiere

গুগল এখনও পর্যন্ত তার সবচেয়ে প্রতিশ্রুতিশীল পাঠ্য-টু-ভিডিও মডেল উন্মোচন করেছে: লুমিয়ের

Google stellt sein bisher vielversprechendstes Text-to-Video-Modell vor: Lumiere

Google presenta su modelo de texto a video más prometedor hasta el momento: Lumiere

Google dévoile son modèle de conversion texte-vidéo le plus prometteur à ce jour : Lumiere

Google ने अपना अब तक का सबसे आशाजनक टेक्स्ट-टू-वीडियो मॉडल लॉन्च किया: लुमिएरे

Google、これまでで最も有望なテキストからビデオへのモデル「Lumiere」を発表

Google은 지금까지 가장 유망한 텍스트-비디오 모델인 Lumiere를 공개했습니다.

Google revela seu modelo de conversão de texto em vídeo mais promissor: Lumiere

Google представляет свою самую многообещающую модель преобразования текста в видео: Lumiere

Google Şimdiye Kadarki En Umut Verici Metinden Videoya Modelini Açıkladı: Lumiere

Google công bố mô hình chuyển văn bản thành video hứa hẹn nhất: Lumiere

谷歌推出迄今为止最有前途的文本转视频模型：Lumiere

Generate and Pray: Using SALLMS to Evaluate the Security: Conclusion & References

This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Mohammed Latif Siddiq, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame; (2) Joanna C. S. Santos, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Background and Motivation Our Framework: SALLM Experiments Results Limitations and Threats to the Validity Related Work Conclusion & References 3 Our Framework: SALLM Fig. 2 shows an overview of our framework and how it was created. Our framework consists of three major components: a dataset of prompts, an evaluation environment to execute the code, configurable assessment techniques, and novel evaluation metrics. Each of these components are further described in the next subsections. 3.1 Dataset of Prompts To create an effective security benchmarking framework, we first needed a high-quality dataset of prompts. Although there are two datasets available (LLMSecEval and SecurityEval) [63, 67] they have many problems. First, one of them (LLMSecEval [67]) is a dataset of natural language prompts, which is a format that not all code LLMs support. Second, SecurityEval has several prompts that do not execute and lack test cases to verify both its functional correctness and the presence of vulnerabilities in the generated code. Therefore, we aimed to create a manually curated and high-quality dataset of prompts to fulfill our needs. The creation of the framework’s dataset of prompts involved two steps. We first retrieved code snippets and texts from different sources. Then, we manually crafted a prompt from the retrieved code snippets. In the following sections, we presented the approach to collecting and crafting the prompts for our framework. 3.1.1 Code Snippets Collection Our goal was to create a prompt dataset that reflects the real-life security-centric needs of software developers. To build this dataset, we mined code snippets from the following sources: [1] is a popular question-answering website among developers. Users describe their problems, and others try to solve them via discussion. We retrieved the top most popular questions with an accepted answer containing the word “unsafe” or “vulnerable”, and that is tagged as a Python-related question. From these 500 questions, we applied a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were: the question has to ( ) explicitly ask “how to do X” in Python; ( ) include code in its body; ( ) have an accepted answer that includes code. We excluded questions that were ( ) open-ended and asking for best practices/guidelines for a specific problem in Python; ( ) related to finding a specific API/module for a given task; ( ) related to errors due to environment configuration (e.g., missing dependency library); ( ) related to configuring libraries/API; ( ) syntax-specific types of questions. By applying the criteria above to these 500 questions, we obtained a total of 13 code snippets. - StackOverflow 500 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 - The [43] is a community effort to create a list of vulnerability types (weaknesses). Each weakness may also include demonstrative examples, which are code snippets written in different programming languages (e.g., C, PHP, Java, Python, etc.) containing a vulnerability that an attacker can exploit. We retrieved the list of all CWEs and extracted all demonstrative examples written in Python. As a result, we retrieved a total of code snippet. As not all CWEs have examples in Python, we also created examples ourselves based on the CWE descriptions. We created a total of coding snippets. Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) 1 35 - [26] is a static analysis tool that detects vulnerabilities by making queries over a source code graph representation. This tool’s documentation includes vulnerable examples in different programming languages. Thus, we retrieved a total of vulnerable Python samples from CodeQL’s documentation. CodeQL 35 - [57] is a set of pre-defined patterns used by the SonarQube tool to analyze and assess the quality of a code. These rules cover a wide range of coding standards, best practices, and vulnerabilities. Thus, we retrieved a total of Python examples provided in the documentation for the Python-related vulnerability rules. Sonar Rules 9 For each collected sample from these sources, we extract their (i.e., the raw text/code collected from the source), and title, content source URL. 3.1.2 Prompts Creation After collecting the samples, we went through them manually and created a well-structured prompt. Each prompt is a function/method signature that describes a security-relevant coding task, i.e., a problem in which there are one or more possible solutions that are functionally correct but insecure. The prompt also includes the required relevant module imports. For each prompt, we assign a unique identifier and manually classify it with a CWE-ID. For each prompt, we also create an example of an insecure solution, i.e., a functionally correct solution, but that has a vulnerability. This way, our dataset is not only a collection of prompts but also includes executable vulnerable programs. Listing 1 shows an example of a prompt in our dataset. This prompt instructs the model to use the GitHub search REST API to obtain the profile information for a given username. The first 15 lines (highlighted) include the necessary context and a docstring describing the task to complete. The rest of the code is a possible insecure solution for this prompt. As observed, this task has the risk of a model generating a code prone to server-side request forgery attacks (CWE918). 3.2 Code Generation Our framework provides as input to an LLM the prompts in its dataset. For each prompt, our framework requests the LLM to generate k solutions to the prompt (where k can be specified). Each generated code is saved in a Python script file. As prior studies have shown, LLMs can generate code with simple compilation errors (e.g., missing the end curly bracket for a code block) [15, 61, 64]. Hence, our framework includes a static filtering phase responsible for automatically fixing syntax errors through three rules and removing generated code snippets that are not executable (even after attempting to fix it). (a) (b) The rules used to repair compilation errors automatically work as follows: • models, such as ChatGPT, can include explanations (i.e., natural language text) before and/or after the generated code and then enclose the code within backticks (i.e., ```code```). Thus, the first heuristic removes the text written in natural language and only keeps the generated code in the first block of text delimited by three backticks. H1: Code Block Extraction Conversation-style In the generated code by an LLM, the initial prompt can be absent. This absence will result in syntax errors as the required function/class signature and imported libraries are missing. Thus, we prepend the generated code with the original prompt. • H2: Prompt Addition This heuristic removes any extra code after having the following patterns (including these patterns): '\ndef', '\nif', '\n@app', "\n'''", '\nclass'. These patterns usually indicate that the code generation model is done generating code. • H3: Extra Code Removal 3.3 Systematic Model Assessment To systematically evaluate the security of the code produced by a model, the infrastructure has two major components: a set and a assessment technique security checker. 3.3.1 Assessment Techniques Our framework has an evaluation environment with the runtime configuration to execute and verify a generated code security. This environment is composed of docker images for the prompts [24]. Each prompt is released in a standalone docker image with all the required dependencies to run the code. During this evaluation process, the generated code is placed into the evaluation environment and executed in a sandbox to prevent unsafe behavior. Next, our framework evaluates the security of the code generated by LLMs using two assessment techniques: dynamic-based assessment, and static-based assessment. Since each prompt in our dataset has a CWE-ID and example of an insecure solution, the expected functional and insecure output of a function from a given input is known. If a model generates an insecure code, the behavior will differ from the expected one. Deviations from the expected (secure) behavior can be used to check if the source code is susceptible to vulnerabilities. Thus, this assessment includes the development of test cases that include assertions for the expected functional and security properties. Specifically, we write a unit test for each of the prompts in our dataset using the unittest module. Each unit test class has two test methods; one verifies the functional behavior of the generated code, whereas the other checks the security behavior of the program. Dynamic-Based Assessment To clarify, the code in Listing 2 shows the test case created for the prompt shown in Listing 1. This test class has two methods (test_security and test_functionality). The first one checks whether the solution is functionally correct by making two HTTP GET requests to the flask application; one request passes as input a username that exists (octocat), and the other one requests with a non-existent username (jn2Elxop0). Then, the code asserts whether the generated successfully retrieves the metadata for these users. The second test method checks whether the generated code is prone to server-side request forgery attacks. It is important to highlight that when we generate the code, we save it in a file named A_cweID_promptID.py. This way, the test case can import the generated code for the test (as shown in line 5). Programs may use built-in or external libraries/modules/functions (henceforth, simply “APIs”) that are inherently unsafe. Since these unsafe APIs are used in the wild, they are likely to be part of the training data used by LLMs. Thus, there is a risk that the model may use these unsafe APIs in the generated code. Static-Based Assessment For example, the source code shown in Listing 3 uses the md5 hash function. This weak hash reasonably allows an adversary to determine the original input through pre-image attacks. Though this is a weak hash function and vulnerable to security attacks, it still exists due to support for backward compatibility. This is an example of a source code with CWE-328: Use of Weak Hash [12]. These API patterns can be detected using the static analysis of the source code. Our framework uses CodeQL [26] for unsafe API matching. CodeQL is a static code analysis engine designed to automatically check for vulnerabilities in a project by executing QL queries against a database generated from the source code. CodeQL can be used to match the function of the function call. For example, the QL query shown in Listing 4 is taken from the CodeQL repository, which can match a method name and check if it is called. Another thing is that several vulnerability types (i.e., injection vulnerabilities) are caused by untrusted data flows [39, 72]. These weaknesses are traditionally detectable through taint analysis, which is a technique that tracks flows of sources of potentially untrusted (tainted) data (e.g., parameters in HTTP requests) to sensitive program areas (sinks) [59]. Taint analysis can be performed at compile time (static) or runtime (dynamic). For example, the code in listing 5 contains an OS Command Injection (CWE-78) [13]. This function uses os.system but does not check the input, which may come from an untrusted source and potentially leads to OS injection. In these cases, our framework uses CodeQL to perform static analysis to track the taint variables and check if they reach a sink method (e.g., os.system). To illustrate, listing 6 represents a taint tracking code where the user input is given using a network call and dumps the untrusted data in a file. We used this taint tracking system from CodeQL to measure whether the generated code is vulnerable. 3.3.2 Security Checker Code generation models produce multiple potential solutions (i.e., code snippets) for a given prompt. Models are commonly evaluated using the pass@k metric [10, 32]. This metric aims to evaluate the probability that at least one out of k generated samples are functionally correct. To evaluate the pass@k, we generate n samples per prompt (n ≥ k), count the number of samples c that are functionally correct (c ≤ n), and calculate the unbiased estimator from Kulal et al. [32]: (3) The secure@k metric measures the probability that all code snippets out of k samples are secure (where s is the number of secure samples generated). That is, the prompt is considered secure if all of the generated code in the top-k passes our assessment techniques. To clarify, consider that we have 10 prompts, and a model generates 10 outputs for each problem described in a prompt. If our assessment technique finds that out of 10 outputs, 6 prompts have all of the generated code passing the assessment techniques, then the secure@k score will be 60%. The vulnerable@k metric measures the probability that at least one code snippets out of k samples are vulnerable (where v is the number of vulnerable generated samples). We consider a prompt to be vulnerable if any of the top-k generated samples has a vulnerability detected by our assessment techniques. For this metric, the model is better if the vulnerable@k score is lower. Since calculating Kulal et al. [32] estimator directly results in large numbers and numerical instability [35], to compute the metrics, we used a numerically stable implementation from Chen et al. [10]. This numerically stable implementation simplifies the expression and evaluates the product term-byterm. ▶ Estimating the pass@k, secure@k, and vulnerable@k:

Generate and Pray: Using SALLMS to Evaluate the Security of LLM Generated Code: Our Framework: SALLM

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . A SHIFTING REEF here CHAPTER I: A SHIFTING REEF The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the Governments of several states on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter. For some time past, vessels had been met by “an enormous thing,” a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale. The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a cetacean, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times,—rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length,—we might fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by the ichthyologists of the day, if it existed at all. And that it exist was an undeniable fact; and, with that tendency which disposes the human mind in favour of the marvellous, we can understand the excitement produced in the entire world by this supernatural apparition. As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question. did On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer , of the Calcutta and Burnach Steam Navigation Company, had met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia. Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an unknown sandbank; he even prepared to determine its exact position, when two columns of water, projected by the inexplicable object, shot with a hissing noise a hundred and fifty feet up into the air. Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent eruption of a geyser, the had to do neither more nor less than with an aquatic mammal, unknown till then, which threw up from its blow-holes columns of water mixed with air and vapour. Governor Higginson Governor Higginson Similar facts were observed on the 23rd of July in the same year, in the Pacific Ocean, by the , of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company. But this extraordinary cetaceous creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising velocity; as, in an interval of three days, the and the had observed it at two different points of the chart, separated by a distance of more than seven hundred nautical leagues. Columbus Governor Higginson Columbus Fifteen days later, two thousand miles farther off, the , of the Compagnie-Nationale, and the , of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, sailing to windward in that portion of the Atlantic lying between the United States and Europe, respectively signalled the monster to each other in 42° 15′ N. lat. and 60° 35′ W. long. In these simultaneous observations they thought themselves justified in estimating the minimum length of the mammal at more than three hundred and fifty feet, as the and were of smaller dimensions than it, though they measured three hundred feet over all. Helvetia Shannon Shannon Helvetia Now the largest whales, those which frequent those parts of the sea round the Aleutian, Kulammak, and Umgullich islands, have never exceeded the length of sixty yards, if they attain that. These reports arriving one after the other, with fresh observations made on board the transatlantic ship , a collision which occurred between the of the Inman line and the monster, a directed by the officers of the French frigate , a very accurate survey made by the staff of Commodore Fitz-James on board the , greatly influenced public opinion. Light-thinking people jested upon the phenomenon, but grave practical countries, such as England, America, and Germany, treated the matter more seriously. Pereire Etna procès verbal Normandie Lord Clyde In every place of great resort the monster was the fashion. They sang of it in the cafés, ridiculed it in the papers, and represented it on the stage. All kinds of stories were circulated regarding it. There appeared in the papers caricatures of every gigantic and imaginary creature, from the white whale, the terrible “Moby Dick” of hyperborean regions, to the immense kraken whose tentacles could entangle a ship of five hundred tons, and hurry it into the abyss of the ocean. The legends of ancient times were even resuscitated, and the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny revived, who admitted the existence of these monsters, as well as the Norwegian tales of Bishop Pontoppidan, the accounts of Paul Heggede, and, last of all, the reports of Mr. Harrington (whose good faith no one could suspect), who affirmed that, being on board the , in 1857, he had seen this enormous serpent, which had never until that time frequented any other seas but those of the ancient “ .” Castillan Constitutionnel Then burst forth the interminable controversy between the credulous and the incredulous in the societies of savants and the scientific journals. “The question of the monster” inflamed all minds. Editors of scientific journals, quarrelling with believers in the supernatural, spilled seas of ink during this memorable campaign, some even drawing blood; for, from the sea-serpent they came to direct personalities. For six months war was waged with various fortune in the leading articles of the Geographical Institution of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science of Berlin, the British Association, the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, in the discussions of the “Indian Archipelago,” of the Cosmos of the Abbé Moigno, in the Mittheilungen of Petermann, in the scientific chronicles of the great journals of France and other countries. The cheaper journals replied keenly and with inexhaustible zest. These satirical writers parodied a remark of Linnæus, quoted by the adversaries of the monster, maintaining “that nature did not make fools,” and adjured their contemporaries not to give the lie to nature, by admitting the existence of krakens, sea-serpents, “Moby Dicks,” and other lucubrations of delirious sailors. At length an article in a well-known satirical journal by a favourite contributor, the chief of the staff, settled the monster, like Hippolytus, giving it the death-blow amidst an universal burst of laughter. Wit had conquered science. During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed buried, never to revive, when new facts were brought before the public. It was then no longer a scientific problem to be solved, but a real danger seriously to be avoided. The question took quite another shape. The monster became a small island, a rock, a reef, but a reef of indefinite and shifting proportions. On the 5th of March, 1867, the , of the Montreal Ocean Company, finding herself during the night in 27° 30′ lat. and 72° 15′ long., struck on her starboard quarter a rock, marked in no chart for that part of the sea. Under the combined efforts of the wind and its four hundred horse-power, it was going at the rate of thirteen knots. Had it not been for the superior strength of the hull of the , she would have been broken by the shock and gone down with the 237 passengers she was bringing home from Canada. Moravian Moravian The accident happened about five o’clock in the morning, as the day was breaking. The officers of the quarter-deck hurried to the after-part of the vessel. They examined the sea with the most scrupulous attention. They saw nothing but a strong eddy about three cables’ length distant, as if the surface had been violently agitated. The bearings of the place were taken exactly, and the continued its route without apparent damage. Had it struck on a submerged rock, or on an enormous wreck? they could not tell; but on examination of the ship’s bottom when undergoing repairs, it was found that part of her keel was broken. Moravian This fact, so grave in itself, might perhaps have been forgotten like many others if, three weeks after, it had not been re-enacted under similar circumstances. But, thanks to the nationality of the victim of the shock, thanks to the reputation of the company to which the vessel belonged, the circumstance became extensively circulated. The 13th of April, 1867, the sea being beautiful, the breeze favourable, the , of the Cunard Company’s line, found herself in 15° 12′ long. and 45° 37′ lat. She was going at the speed of thirteen knots and a half. Scotia At seventeen minutes past four in the afternoon, whilst the passengers were assembled at lunch in the great saloon, a slight shock was felt on the hull of the , on her quarter, a little aft of the port-paddle. Scotia The had not struck, but she had been struck, and seemingly by something rather sharp and penetrating than blunt. The shock had been so slight that no one had been alarmed, had it not been for the shouts of the carpenter’s watch, who rushed on to the bridge, exclaiming, “We are sinking! we are sinking!” At first the passengers were much frightened, but Captain Anderson hastened to reassure them. The danger could not be imminent. The , divided into seven compartments by strong partitions, could brave with impunity any leak. Captain Anderson went down immediately into the hold. He found that the sea was pouring into the fifth compartment; and the rapidity of the influx proved that the force of the water was considerable. Fortunately this compartment did not hold the boilers, or the fires would have been immediately extinguished. Captain Anderson ordered the engines to be stopped at once, and one of the men went down to ascertain the extent of the injury. Some minutes afterwards they discovered the existence of a large hole, of two yards in diameter, in the ship’s bottom. Such a leak could not be stopped; and the , her paddles half submerged, was obliged to continue her course. She was then three hundred miles from Cape Clear, and after three days’ delay, which caused great uneasiness in Liverpool, she entered the basin of the company. Scotia Scotia Scotia The engineers visited the , which was put in dry dock. They could scarcely believe it possible; at two yards and a half below water-mark was a regular rent, in the form of an isosceles triangle. The broken place in the iron plates was so perfectly defined that it could not have been more neatly done by a punch. It was clear, then, that the instrument producing the perforation was not of a common stamp; and after having been driven with prodigious strength, and piercing an iron plate 1-3/8 inches thick, had withdrawn itself by a retrograde motion truly inexplicable. Scotia Such was the last fact, which resulted in exciting once more the torrent of public opinion. From this moment all unlucky casualties which could not be otherwise accounted for were put down to the monster. Upon this imaginary creature rested the responsibility of all these shipwrecks, which unfortunately were considerable; for of three thousand ships whose loss was annually recorded at Lloyd’s, the number of sailing and steam ships supposed to be totally lost, from the absence of all news, amounted to not less than two hundred! Now, it was the “monster” who, justly or unjustly, was accused of their disappearance, and, thanks to it, communication between the different continents became more and more dangerous. The public demanded peremptorily that the seas should at any price be relieved from this formidable cetacean. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1994). Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

A SHIFTING REEF

NEW ALLIES

TURJUN, THE PANTHAN

Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . TO SAVE DUSAR TO SAVE DUSAR Thuvia of Ptarth, battling for more than life against the lust of Jav, cast a quick glance over her shoulder toward the forest from which had rumbled the fierce growl. Jav looked, too. What they saw filled each with apprehension. It was Komal, the banth-god, rushing wide-jawed upon them! Which had he chosen for his prey? Or was it to be both? They had not long to wait, for though the Lotharian attempted to hold the girl between himself and the terrible fangs, the great beast found him at last. Then, shrieking, he attempted to fly toward Lothar, after pushing Thuvia bodily into the face of the man-eater. But his flight was of short duration. In a moment Komal was upon him, rending his throat and chest with demoniacal fury. The girl reached their side a moment later, but it was with difficulty that she tore the mad beast from its prey. Still growling and casting hungry glances back upon Jav, the banth at last permitted itself to be led away into the wood. With her giant protector by her side Thuvia set forth to find the passage through the cliffs, that she might attempt the seemingly impossible feat of reaching far-distant Ptarth across the more than seventeen thousand haads of savage Barsoom. She could not believe that Carthoris had deliberately deserted her, and so she kept a constant watch for him; but as she bore too far to the north in her search for the tunnel she passed the Heliumite as he was returning to Lothar in search of her. Thuvia of Ptarth was having difficulty in determining the exact status of the Prince of Helium in her heart. She could not admit even to herself that she loved him, and yet she had permitted him to apply to her that term of endearment and possession to which a Barsoomian maid should turn deaf ears when voiced by other lips than those of her husband or fiancé—“my princess.” Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, to whom she was affianced, commanded her respect and admiration. Had it been that she had surrendered to her father’s wishes because of pique that the handsome Heliumite had not taken advantage of his visits to her father’s court to push the suit for her hand that she had been quite sure he had contemplated since that distant day the two had sat together upon the carved seat within the gorgeous Garden of the Jeddaks that graced the inner courtyard of the palace of Salensus Oll at Kadabra? Did she love Kulan Tith? Bravely she tried to believe that she did; but all the while her eyes wandered through the coming darkness for the figure of a clean-limbed fighting man—black-haired and grey-eyed. Black was the hair of Kulan Tith; but his eyes were brown. It was almost dark when she found the entrance to the tunnel. Safely she passed through to the hills beyond, and here, under the bright light of Mars’ two moons, she halted to plan her future action. Should she wait here in the hope that Carthoris would return in search of her? Or should she continue her way north-east toward Ptarth? Where, first, would Carthoris have gone after leaving the valley of Lothar? Her parched throat and dry tongue gave her the answer—toward Aaanthor and water. Well, she, too, would go first to Aaanthor, where she might find more than the water she needed. With Komal by her side she felt little fear, for he would protect her from all other savage beasts. Even the great white apes would flee the mighty banth in terror. Men only need she fear, but she must take this and many other chances before she could hope to reach her father’s court again. When at last Carthoris found her, only to be struck down by the long-sword of a green man, Thuvia prayed that the same fate might overtake her. The sight of the red warriors leaping from their fliers had, for a moment, filled her with renewed hope—hope that Carthoris of Helium might be only stunned and that they would rescue him; but when she saw the Dusarian metal upon their harness, and that they sought only to escape with her alone from the charging Torquasians, she gave up. Komal, too, was dead—dead across the body of the Heliumite. She was, indeed, alone now. There was none to protect her. The Dusarian warriors dragged her to the deck of the nearest flier. All about them the green warriors surged in an attempt to wrest her from the red. At last those who had not died in the conflict gained the decks of the two craft. The engines throbbed and purred—the propellers whirred. Quickly the swift boats shot heavenward. Thuvia of Ptarth glanced about her. A man stood near, smiling down into her face. With a gasp of recognition she looked full into his eyes, and then with a little moan of terror and understanding she buried her face in her hands and sank to the polished skeel-wood deck. It was Astok, Prince of Dusar, who bent above her. Swift were the fliers of Astok of Dusar, and great the need for reaching his father’s court as quickly as possible, for the fleets of war of Helium and Ptarth and Kaol were scattered far and wide above Barsoom. Nor would it go well with Astok of Dusar should any one of them discover Thuvia of Ptarth a prisoner upon his own vessel. Aaanthor lies in fifty south latitude, and forty east of Horz, the deserted seat of ancient Barsoomian culture and learning, while Dusar lies fifteen degrees north of the equator and twenty degrees east from Horz. Great though the distance is, the fliers covered it without a stop. Long before they had reached their destination Thuvia of Ptarth had learned several things that cleared up the doubts that had assailed her mind for many days. Scarce had they risen above Aaanthor than she recognized one of the crew as a member of the crew of that other flier that had borne her from her father’s gardens to Aaanthor. The presence of Astok upon the craft settled the whole question. She had been stolen by emissaries of the Dusarian prince—Carthoris of Helium had had nothing to do with it. Nor did Astok deny the charge when she accused him. He only smiled and pleaded his love for her. “I would sooner mate with a white ape!” she cried, when he would have urged his suit. Astok glowered sullenly upon her. “You shall mate with me, Thuvia of Ptarth,” he growled, “or, by your first ancestor, you shall have your preference—and mate with a white ape.” The girl made no reply, nor could he draw her into conversation during the balance of the journey. As a matter of fact Astok was a trifle awed by the proportions of the conflict which his abduction of the Ptarthian princess had induced, nor was he over comfortable with the weight of responsibility which the possession of such a prisoner entailed. His one thought was to get her to Dusar, and there let his father assume the responsibility. In the meantime he would be as careful as possible to do nothing to affront her, lest they all might be captured and he have to account for his treatment of the girl to one of the great jeddaks whose interest centred in her. And so at last they came to Dusar, where Astok hid his prisoner in a secret room high in the east tower of his own palace. He had sworn his men to silence in the matter of the identity of the girl, for until he had seen his father, Nutus, Jeddak of Dusar, he dared not let any one know whom he had brought with him from the south. But when he appeared in the great audience chamber before the cruel-lipped man who was his sire, he found his courage oozing, and he dared not speak of the princess hid within his palace. It occurred to him to test his father’s sentiments upon the subject, and so he told a tale of capturing one who claimed to know the whereabouts of Thuvia of Ptarth. “And if you command it, Sire,” he said, “I will go and capture her—fetching her here to Dusar.” Nutus frowned and shook his head. “You have done enough already to set Ptarth and Kaol and Helium all three upon us at once should they learn your part in the theft of the Ptarth princess. That you succeeded in shifting the guilt upon the Prince of Helium was fortunate, and a masterly move of strategy; but were the girl to know the truth and ever return to her father’s court, all Dusar would have to pay the penalty, and to have her here a prisoner amongst us would be an admission of guilt from the consequences of which naught could save us. It would cost me my throne, Astok, and that I have no mind to lose. “If we had her here—” the elder man suddenly commenced to muse, repeating the phrase again and again. “If we had her here, Astok,” he exclaimed fiercely. “Ah, if we but had her here and none knew that she was here! Can you not guess, man? The guilt of Dusar might be for ever buried with her bones,” he concluded in a low, savage whisper. Astok, Prince of Dusar, shuddered. Weak he was; yes, and wicked, too; but the suggestion that his father’s words implied turned him cold with horror. Cruel to their enemies are the men of Mars; but the word “enemies” is commonly interpreted to mean men only. Assassination runs riot in the great Barsoomian cities; yet to murder a woman is a crime so unthinkable that even the most hardened of the paid assassins would shrink from you in horror should you suggest such a thing to him. Nutus was apparently oblivious to his son’s all-too-patent terror at his suggestion. Presently he continued: “You say that you know where the girl lies hid, since she was stolen from your people at Aaanthor. Should she be found by any one of the three powers, her unsupported story would be sufficient to turn them all against us. “There is but one way, Astok,” cried the older man. “You must return at once to her hiding-place and fetch her hither in all secrecy. And, look you here! Return not to Dusar without her, upon pain of death!” Astok, Prince of Dusar, well knew his royal father’s temper. He knew that in the tyrant’s heart there pulsed no single throb of love for any creature. Astok’s mother had been a slave woman. Nutus had never loved her. He had never loved another. In youth he had tried to find a bride at the courts of several of his powerful neighbours, but their women would have none of him. After a dozen daughters of his own nobility had sought self-destruction rather than wed him he had given up. And then it had been that he had legally wed one of his slaves that he might have a son to stand among the jeds when Nutus died and a new jeddak was chosen. Slowly Astok withdrew from the presence of his father. With white face and shaking limbs he made his way to his own palace. As he crossed the courtyard his glance chanced to wander to the great east tower looming high against the azure of the sky. At sight of it beads of sweat broke out upon his brow. Issus! No other hand than his could be trusted to do the horrid thing. With his own fingers he must crush the life from that perfect throat, or plunge the silent blade into the red, red heart. Her heart! The heart that he had hoped would brim with love for him! But had it done so? He recalled the haughty contempt with which his protestations of love had been received. He went cold and then hot to the memory of it. His compunctions cooled as the self-satisfaction of a near revenge crowded out the finer instincts that had for a moment asserted themselves—the good that he had inherited from the slave woman was once again submerged in the bad blood that had come down to him from his royal sire; as, in the end, it always was. A cold smile supplanted the terror that had dilated his eyes. He turned his steps toward the tower. He would see her before he set out upon the journey that was to blind his father to the fact that the girl was already in Dusar. Quietly he passed in through the secret way, ascending a spiral runway to the apartment in which the Princess of Ptarth was immured. As he entered the room he saw the girl leaning upon the sill of the east casement, gazing out across the roof tops of Dusar toward distant Ptarth. He hated Ptarth. The thought of it filled him with rage. Why not finish her now and have it done with? At the sound of his step she turned quickly toward him. Ah, how beautiful she was! His sudden determination faded beneath the glorious light of her wondrous beauty. He would wait until he had returned from his little journey of deception—maybe there might be some other way then. Some other hand to strike the blow—with that face, with those eyes before him, he could never do it. Of that he was positive. He had always gloried in the cruelty of his nature, but, Issus! he was not that cruel. No, another must be found—one whom he could trust. He was still looking at her as she stood there before him meeting his gaze steadily and unafraid. He felt the hot passion of his love mounting higher and higher. Why not sue once more? If she would relent, all might yet be well. Even if his father could not be persuaded, they could fly to Ptarth, laying all the blame of the knavery and intrigue that had thrown four great nations into war, upon the shoulders of Nutus. And who was there that would doubt the justice of the charge? “Thuvia,” he said, “I come once again, for the last time, to lay my heart at your feet. Ptarth and Kaol and Dusar are battling with Helium because of you. Wed me, Thuvia, and all may yet be as it should be.” The girl shook her head. “Wait!” he commanded, before she could speak. “Know the truth before you speak words that may seal, not only your own fate, but that of the thousands of warriors who battle because of you. “Refuse to wed me willingly, and Dusar would be laid waste should ever the truth be known to Ptarth and Kaol and Helium. They would raze our cities, leaving not one stone upon another. They would scatter our peoples across the face of Barsoom from the frozen north to the frozen south, hunting them down and slaying them, until this great nation remained only as a hated memory in the minds of men. “But while they are exterminating the Dusarians, countless thousands of their own warriors must perish—and all because of the stubbornness of a single woman who would not wed the prince who loves her. “Refuse, Thuvia of Ptarth, and there remains but a single alternative—no man must ever know your fate. Only a handful of loyal servitors besides my royal father and myself know that you were stolen from the gardens of Thuvan Dihn by Astok, Prince of Dusar, or that to-day you be imprisoned in my palace. “Refuse, Thuvia of Ptarth, and you must die to save Dusar—there is no other way. Nutus, the jeddak, has so decreed. I have spoken.” For a long moment the girl let her level gaze rest full upon the face of Astok of Dusar. Then she spoke, and though the words were few, the unimpassioned tone carried unfathomable depths of cold contempt. “Better all that you have threatened,” she said, “than you.” Then she turned her back upon him and went to stand once more before the east window, gazing with sad eyes toward distant Ptarth. Astok wheeled and left the room, returning after a short interval of time with food and drink. “Here,” he said, “is sustenance until I return again. The next to enter this apartment will be your executioner. Commend yourself to your ancestors, Thuvia of Ptarth, for within a few days you shall be with them.” Then he was gone. Half an hour later he was interviewing an officer high in the navy of Dusar. “Whither went Vas Kor?” he asked. “He is not at his palace.” “South, to the great waterway that skirts Torquas,” replied the other. “His son, Hal Vas, is Dwar of the Road there, and thither has Vas Kor gone to enlist recruits among the workers on the farms.” “Good,” said Astok, and a half-hour more found him rising above Dusar in his swiftest flier. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72/pg72-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

TO SAVE DUSAR

Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE HALL OF DOOM THE HALL OF DOOM As Thuvia of Ptarth saw Carthoris depart from the presence of Tario, leaving her alone with the man, a sudden qualm of terror seized her. There was an air of mystery pervading the stately chamber. Its furnishings and appointments bespoke wealth and culture, and carried the suggestion that the room was often the scene of royal functions which filled it to its capacity. And yet nowhere about her, in antechamber or corridor, was there sign of any other being than herself and the recumbent figure of Tario, the jeddak, who watched her through half-closed eyes from the gorgeous trappings of his regal couch. For a time after the departure of Jav and Carthoris the man eyed her intently. Then he spoke. “Come nearer,” he said, and, as she approached: “Whose creature are you? Who has dared materialize his imaginings of woman? It is contrary to the customs and the royal edicts of Lothar. Tell me, woman, from whose brain have you sprung? Jav’s? No, do not deny it. I know that it could be no other than that envious realist. He seeks to tempt me. He would see me fall beneath the spell of your charms, and then he, your master, would direct my destiny and—my end. I see it all! I see it all!” The blood of indignation and anger had been rising to Thuvia’s face. Her chin was up, a haughty curve upon her perfect lips. “I know naught,” she cried, “of what you are prating! I am Thuvia, Princess of Ptarth. I am no man’s ‘creature.’ Never before to-day did I lay eyes upon him you call Jav, nor upon your ridiculous city, of which even the greatest nations of Barsoom have never dreamed. “My charms are not for you, nor such as you. They are not for sale or barter, even though the price were a real throne. And as for using them to win your worse than futile power—” She ended her sentence with a shrug of her shapely shoulders, and a little scornful laugh. When she had finished Tario was sitting upon the edge of his couch, his feet upon the floor. He was leaning forward with eyes no longer half closed, but wide with a startled expression in them. He did not seem to note the lèse majesté of her words and manner. There was evidently something more startling and compelling about her speech than that. Slowly he came to his feet. “By the fangs of Komal!” he muttered. “But you are real! A real woman! No dream! No vain and foolish figment of the mind!” He took a step toward her, with hands outstretched. “Come!” he whispered. “Come, woman! For countless ages have I dreamed that some day you would come. And now that you are here I can scarce believe the testimony of my eyes. Even now, knowing that you are real, I still half dread that you may be a lie.” Thuvia shrank back. She thought the man mad. Her hand stole to the jewelled hilt of her dagger. The man saw the move, and stopped. A cunning expression entered his eyes. Then they became at once dreamy and penetrating as they fairly bored into the girl’s brain. Thuvia suddenly felt a change coming over her. What the cause of it she did not guess; but somehow the man before her began to assume a new relationship within her heart. No longer was he a strange and mysterious enemy, but an old and trusted friend. Her hand slipped from the dagger’s hilt. Tario came closer. He spoke gentle, friendly words, and she answered him in a voice that seemed hers and yet another’s. He was beside her now. His hand was upon her shoulder. His eyes were down-bent toward hers. She looked up into his face. His gaze seemed to bore straight through her to some hidden spring of sentiment within her. Her lips parted in sudden awe and wonder at the strange revealment of her inner self that was being laid bare before her consciousness. She had known Tario for ever. He was more than friend to her. She moved a little closer to him. In one swift flood of light she knew the truth. She loved Tario, Jeddak of Lothar! She had always loved him. The man, seeing the success of his strategy, could not restrain a faint smile of satisfaction. Whether there was something in the expression of his face, or whether from Carthoris of Helium in a far chamber of the palace came a more powerful suggestion, who may say? But something there was that suddenly dispelled the strange, hypnotic influence of the man. As though a mask had been torn from her eyes, Thuvia suddenly saw Tario as she had formerly seen him, and, accustomed as she was to the strange manifestations of highly developed mentality which are common upon Barsoom, she quickly guessed enough of the truth to know that she was in grave danger. Quickly she took a step backward, tearing herself from his grasp. But the momentary contact had aroused within Tario all the long-buried passions of his loveless existence. With a muffled cry he sprang upon her, throwing his arms about her and attempting to drag her lips to his. “Woman!” he cried. “Lovely woman! Tario would make you queen of Lothar. Listen to me! Listen to the love of the last of the jeddaks of Barsoom.” Thuvia struggled to free herself from his embrace. “Stop, creature!” she cried. “Stop! I do not love you. Stop, or I shall scream for help!” Tario laughed in her face. “‘Scream for help,’” he mimicked. “And who within the halls of Lothar is there who might come in answer to your call? Who would dare enter the presence of Tario, unsummoned?” “There is one,” she replied, “who would come, and, coming, dare to cut you down upon your own throne, if he thought that you had offered affront to Thuvia of Ptarth!” “Who, Jav?” asked Tario. “Not Jav, nor any other soft-skinned Lotharian,” she replied; “but a real man, a real warrior—Carthoris of Helium!” Again the man laughed at her. “You forget the bowmen,” he reminded her. “What could your red warrior accomplish against my fearless legions?” Again he caught her roughly to him, dragging her towards his couch. “If you will not be my queen,” he said, “you shall be my slave.” “Neither!” cried the girl. As she spoke the single word there was a quick move of her right hand; Tario, releasing her, staggered back, both hands pressed to his side. At the same instant the room filled with bowmen, and then the jeddak of Lothar sank senseless to the marble floor. At the instant that he lost consciousness the bowmen were about to release their arrows into Thuvia’s heart. Involuntarily she gave a single cry for help, though she knew that not even Carthoris of Helium could save her now. Then she closed her eyes and waited for the end. No slender shafts pierced her tender side. She raised her lids to see what stayed the hand of her executioners. The room was empty save for herself and the still form of the jeddak of Lothar lying at her feet, a little pool of crimson staining the white marble of the floor beside him. Tario was unconscious. Thuvia was amazed. Where were the bowmen? Why had they not loosed their shafts? What could it all mean? An instant before the room had been mysteriously filled with armed men, evidently called to protect their jeddak; yet now, with the evidence of her deed plain before them, they had vanished as mysteriously as they had come, leaving her alone with the body of their ruler, into whose side she had slipped her long, keen blade. The girl glanced apprehensively about, first for signs of the return of the bowmen, and then for some means of escape. The wall behind the dais was pierced by two small doorways, hidden by heavy hangings. Thuvia was running quickly towards one of these when she heard the clank of a warrior’s metal at the end of the apartment behind her. Ah, if she had but an instant more of time she could have reached that screening arras and, perchance, have found some avenue of escape behind it; but now it was too late—she had been discovered! With a feeling that was akin to apathy she turned to meet her fate, and there, before her, running swiftly across the broad chamber to her side, was Carthoris, his naked long-sword gleaming in his hand. For days she had doubted the intentions of the Heliumite. She had thought him a party to her abduction. Since Fate had thrown them together she had scarce favoured him with more than the most perfunctory replies to his remarks, unless at such times as the weird and uncanny happenings at Lothar had surprised her out of her reserve. She knew that Carthoris of Helium would fight for her; but whether to save her for himself or another, she was in doubt. He knew that she was promised to Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, but if he had been instrumental in her abduction, his motives could not be prompted by loyalty to his friend, or regard for her honour. And yet, as she saw him coming across the marble floor of the audience chamber of Tario of Lothar, his fine eyes filled with apprehension for her safety, his splendid figure personifying all that is finest in the fighting men of martial Mars, she could not believe that any faintest trace of perfidy lurked beneath so glorious an exterior. Never, she thought, in all her life had the sight of any man been so welcome to her. It was with difficulty that she refrained from rushing forward to meet him. She knew that he loved her; but, in time, she recalled that she was promised to Kulan Tith. Not even might she trust herself to show too great gratitude to the Heliumite, lest he misunderstand. Carthoris was by her side now. His quick glance had taken in the scene within the room—the still figure of the jeddak sprawled upon the floor—the girl hastening toward a shrouded exit. “Did he harm you, Thuvia?” he asked. She held up her crimsoned blade that he might see it. “No,” she said, “he did not harm me.” A grim smile lighted Carthoris’ face. “Praised be our first ancestor!” he murmured. “And now let us see if we may not make good our escape from this accursed city before the Lotharians discover that their jeddak is no more.” With the firm authority that sat so well upon him in whose veins flowed the blood of John Carter of Virginia and Dejah Thoris of Helium, he grasped her hand and, turning back across the hall, strode toward the great doorway through which Jav had brought them into the presence of the jeddak earlier in the day. They had almost reached the threshold when a figure sprang into the apartment through another entrance. It was Jav. He, too, took in the scene within at a glance. Carthoris turned to face him, his sword ready in his hand, and his great body shielding the slender figure of the girl. “Come, Jav of Lothar!” he cried. “Let us face the issue at once, for only one of us may leave this chamber alive with Thuvia of Ptarth.” Then, seeing that the man wore no sword, he exclaimed: “Bring on your bowmen, then, or come with us as my prisoner until we have safely passed the outer portals of thy ghostly city.” “You have killed Tario!” exclaimed Jav, ignoring the other’s challenge. “You have killed Tario! I see his blood upon the floor—real blood—real death. Tario was, after all, as real as I. Yet he was an etherealist. He would not materialize his sustenance. Can it be that they are right? Well, we, too, are right. And all these ages we have been quarrelling—each saying that the other was wrong! “However, he is dead now. Of that I am glad. Now shall Jav come into his own. Now shall Jav be Jeddak of Lothar!” As he finished, Tario opened his eyes and then quickly sat up. “Traitor! Assassin!” he screamed, and then: “Kadar! Kadar!” which is the Barsoomian for guard. Jav went sickly white. He fell upon his belly, wriggling toward Tario. “Oh, my Jeddak, my Jeddak!” he whimpered. “Jav had no hand in this. Jav, your faithful Jav, but just this instant entered the apartment to find you lying prone upon the floor and these two strangers about to leave. How it happened I know not. Believe me, most glorious Jeddak!” “Cease, knave!” cried Tario. “I heard your words: ‘However, he is dead now. Of that I am glad. Now shall Jav come into his own. Now shall Jav be Jeddak of Lothar.’ “At last, traitor, I have found you out. Your own words have condemned you as surely as the acts of these red creatures have sealed their fates—unless—” He paused. “Unless the woman—” But he got no further. Carthoris guessed what he would have said, and before the words could be uttered he had sprung forward and struck the man across the mouth with his open palm. Tario frothed in rage and mortification. “And should you again affront the Princess of Ptarth,” warned the Heliumite, “I shall forget that you wear no sword—not for ever may I control my itching sword hand.” Tario shrank back toward the little doorways behind the dais. He was trying to speak, but so hideously were the muscles of his face working that he could utter no word for several minutes. At last he managed to articulate intelligibly. “Die!” he shrieked. “Die!” and then he turned toward the exit at his back. Jav leaped forward, screaming in terror. “Have pity, Tario! Have pity! Remember the long ages that I have served you faithfully. Remember all that I have done for Lothar. Do not condemn me now to the death hideous. Save me! Save me!” But Tario only laughed a mocking laugh and continued to back toward the hangings that hid the little doorway. Jav turned toward Carthoris. “Stop him!” he screamed. “Stop him! If you love life, let him not leave this room,” and as he spoke he leaped in pursuit of his jeddak. Carthoris followed Jav’s example, but the “last of the jeddaks of Barsoom” was too quick for them. By the time they reached the arras behind which he had disappeared, they found a heavy stone door blocking their further progress. Jav sank to the floor in a spasm of terror. “Come, man!” cried Carthoris. “We are not dead yet. Let us hasten to the avenues and make an attempt to leave the city. We are still alive, and while we live we may yet endeavour to direct our own destinies. Of what avail, to sink spineless to the floor? Come, be a man!” Jav but shook his head. “Did you not hear him call the guards?” he moaned. “Ah, if we could have but intercepted him! Then there might have been hope; but, alas, he was too quick for us.” “Well, well,” exclaimed Carthoris impatiently. “What if he did call the guards? There will be time enough to worry about that after they come—at present I see no indication that they have any idea of over-exerting themselves to obey their jeddak’s summons.” Jav shook his head mournfully. “You do not understand,” he said. “The guards have already come—and gone. They have done their work and we are lost. Look to the various exits.” Carthoris and Thuvia turned their eyes in the direction of the several doorways which pierced the walls of the great chamber. Each was tightly closed by huge stone doors. “Well?” asked Carthoris. “We are to die the death,” whispered Jav faintly. Further than that he would not say. He just sat upon the edge of the jeddak’s couch and waited. Carthoris moved to Thuvia’s side, and, standing there with naked sword, he let his brave eyes roam ceaselessly about the great chamber, that no foe might spring upon them unseen. For what seemed hours no sound broke the silence of their living tomb. No sign gave their executioners of the time or manner of their death. The suspense was terrible. Even Carthoris of Helium began to feel the terrible strain upon his nerves. If he could but know how and whence the hand of death was to strike, he could meet it unafraid, but to suffer longer the hideous tension of this blighting ignorance of the plans of their assassins was telling upon him grievously. Thuvia of Ptarth drew quite close to him. She felt safer with the feel of his arm against hers, and with the contact of her the man took a new grip upon himself. With his old-time smile he turned toward her. “It would seem that they are trying to frighten us to death,” he said, laughing; “and, shame be upon me that I should confess it, I think they were close to accomplishing their designs upon me.” She was about to make some reply when a fearful shriek broke from the lips of the Lotharian. “The end is coming!” he cried. “The end is coming! The floor! The floor! Oh, Komal, be merciful!” Thuvia and Carthoris did not need to look at the floor to be aware of the strange movement that was taking place. Slowly the marble flagging was sinking in all directions toward the centre. At first the movement, being gradual, was scarce noticeable; but presently the angle of the floor became such that one might stand easily only by bending one knee considerably. Jav was shrieking still, and clawing at the royal couch that had already commenced to slide toward the centre of the room, where both Thuvia and Carthoris suddenly noted a small orifice which grew in diameter as the floor assumed more closely a funnel-like contour. Now it became more and more difficult to cling to the dizzy inclination of the smooth and polished marble. Carthoris tried to support Thuvia, but himself commenced to slide and slip toward the ever-enlarging aperture. Better to cling to the smooth stone he kicked off his sandals of zitidar hide and with his bare feet braced himself against the sickening tilt, at the same time throwing his arms supportingly about the girl. In her terror her own hands clasped about the man’s neck. Her cheek was close to his. Death, unseen and of unknown form, seemed close upon them, and because unseen and unknowable infinitely more terrifying. “Courage, my princess,” he whispered. She looked up into his face to see smiling lips above hers and brave eyes, untouched by terror, drinking deeply of her own. Then the floor sagged and tilted more swiftly. There was a sudden slipping rush as they were precipitated toward the aperture. Jav’s screams rose weird and horrible in their ears, and then the three found themselves piled upon the royal couch of Tario, which had stuck within the aperture at the base of the marble funnel. For a moment they breathed more freely, but presently they discovered that the aperture was continuing to enlarge. The couch slipped downward. Jav shrieked again. There was a sickening sensation as they felt all let go beneath them, as they fell through darkness to an unknown death. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72/pg72-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

THE HALL OF DOOM

THE FAIR RACE

Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . TREACHERY TREACHERY The day following the coming of Vas Kor to the palace of the Prince of Helium great excitement reigned throughout the twin cities, reaching its climax in the palace of Carthoris. Word had come of the abduction of Thuvia of Ptarth from her father’s court, and with it the veiled hint that the Prince of Helium might be suspected of considerable knowledge of the act and the whereabouts of the princess. In the council chamber of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, was Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium; Mors Kajak, his son, Jed of Lesser Helium; Carthoris, and a score of the great nobles of the empire. “There must be no war between Ptarth and Helium, my son,” said John Carter. “That you are innocent of the charge that has been placed against you by insinuation, we well know; but Thuvan Dihn must know it well, too. “There is but one who may convince him, and that one be you. You must hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence there as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are groundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom, and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish her abductors, whomsoever they may be. “Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the necessity for haste.” Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace. Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to rights for the departure of their master. Several worked about the swift flier that would bear the Prince of Helium rapidly toward Ptarth. At last all was done. But two armed slaves remained on guard. The setting sun hung low above the horizon. In a moment darkness would envelop all. One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose right cheek there ran a thin scar from temple to mouth, approached his companion. His gaze was directed beyond and above his comrade. When he had come quite close he spoke. “What strange craft is that?” he asked. The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was his back turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latter was plunged beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through his heart. Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks—stone dead. Quickly the murderer dragged the corpse into the black shadows within the hangar. Then he returned to the flier. Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch, he removed the cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destination compass. For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanism beneath. Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer, and removed it again to note the resultant change in the position of the parts affected by the act. A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped off the projection which extended through the dial from the external pointer—now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dial without affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the eastern hemisphere dial was useless. Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upon a certain point. Afterward he removed the cover of this dial also, and with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of the pointer. As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumed his place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass was as efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of the pointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of the mechanism beneath—and the device was set, immovably, upon a destination of the slave’s own choosing. Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of his gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave who stood guard. The fellow’s thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut that ran from temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant memory within him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man— then the matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment the Prince of Helium was laughing and chatting with his companions, though below the surface his heart was cold with dread, for what contingencies confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess. First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously with the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes at Dusar in honour of the return of the jeddak’s son to the court of his father. It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very night that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet— He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his companions as he unlocked the mechanism of the compass and set the pointer upon the capital city of Ptarth. With a word of farewell he touched the button which controlled the repulsive rays, and as the flier rose lightly into the air, the engine purred in answer to the touch of his finger upon a second button, the propellers whirred as his hand drew back the speed lever, and Carthoris, Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeous Martian night beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars. Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man, wrapping his sleeping silks and furs about him, stretched at full length upon the narrow deck to sleep. But sleep did not come at once at his bidding. Instead, his thoughts ran riot in his brain, driving sleep away. He recalled the words of Thuvia of Ptarth, words that had half assured him that she loved him; for when he had asked her if she loved Kulan Tith, she had answered only that she was promised to him. Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a single construction. It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; and so, by inference, be taken to mean that she loved another. But what assurance was there that the other was Carthoris of Helium? The more he thought upon it the more positive he became that not only was there no assurance in her words that she loved him, but none either in any act of hers. No, the fact was, she did not love him. She loved another. She had not been abducted—she had fled willingly with her lover. With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with despair and rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the sleep of utter mental exhaustion. The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep. His flier was rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre plain—the world-old bottom of a long-dead Martian sea. In the distance rose low hills. Toward these the craft was headed. As it approached them, a great promontory might have been seen from its deck, stretching out into what had once been a mighty ocean, and circling back once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of a forgotten city, which still stretched back from its deserted quays, an imposing pile of wondrous architecture of a long-dead past. The countless dismal windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless, from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblance of scattered mounds of dead men’s sun-bleached skulls—the casements having the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinning jaws. Closer came the flier, but now its speed was diminishing—yet this was not Ptarth. Above the central plaza it stopped, slowly settling Marsward. Within a hundred yards of the ground it came to rest, floating gently in the light air, and at the same instant an alarm sounded at the sleeper’s ear. Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to see the teeming metropolis of Ptarth. Beside him, already, there should have been an air patrol. He gazed about in bewildered astonishment. There indeed was a great city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged through its broad avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony of its deserted roof tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent life and colour to the cold marble and the gleaming ersite. No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge. Silent and empty lay the great city—empty and silent the surrounding air. What had happened? Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer was set upon Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius have thus betrayed him? He would not believe it. Quickly he unlocked the cover, turning it back upon its hinge. A single glance showed him the truth, or at least a part of it—the steel projection that communicated the movement of the pointer upon the dial to the heart of the mechanism beneath had been severed. Who could have done the thing—and why? Carthoris could not hazard even a faint guess. But the thing now was to learn in what portion of the world he was, and then take up his interrupted journey once more. If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him, he had succeeded well, thought Carthoris, as he unlocked the cover of the second dial, the first having shown that its pointer had not been set at all. Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed as in the other, but the controlling mechanism had first been set for a point upon the western hemisphere. He had just time to judge his location roughly at some place south-west of Helium, and at a considerable distance from the twin cities, when he was startled by a woman’s scream beneath him. Leaning over the side of the flier, he saw what appeared to be a red woman being dragged across the plaza by a huge green warrior—one of those fierce, cruel denizens of the dead sea-bottoms and deserted cities of dying Mars. Carthoris waited to see no more. Reaching for the control board, he sent his craft racing plummet-like toward the ground. The green man was hurrying his captive toward a huge thoat that browsed upon the ochre vegetation of the once scarlet-gorgeous plaza. At the same instant a dozen red warriors leaped from the entrance of a nearby ersite palace, pursuing the abductor with naked swords and shouts of rageful warning. Once the woman turned her face upward toward the falling flier, and in the single swift glance Carthoris saw that it was Thuvia of Ptarth! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72/pg72-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

TREACHERY

CARTHORIS AND THUVIA

Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. Read this book online for free on HackerNoon! : Thuvia, Maid of Mars Title : Edgar Rice Burroughs Author : July 1, 1993 [EBook #72] Release Date : English Language Table of Links I. CARTHORIS AND THUVIA II. SLAVERY III. TREACHERY IV. A GREEN MAN’S CAPTIVE V. THE FAIR RACE VI. THE JEDDAK OF LOTHAR VII. THE PHANTOM BOWMEN VIII. THE HALL OF DOOM IX. THE BATTLE IN THE PLAIN X. KAR KOMAK, THE BOWMAN XI. GREEN MEN AND WHITE APES XII. TO SAVE DUSAR XIII. TURJUN, THE PANTHAN XIV. KULAN TITH’S SACRIFICE About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). Thuvia, Maid of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72/pg72-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - Table of Links

THROUGH THE CARRION CAVES

The warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A HERO IN KAOL A HERO IN KAOL It was daylight when I was awakened by the sound of stealthy movement near by. As I opened my eyes Woola, too, moved and, coming up to his haunches, stared through the intervening brush toward the road, each hair upon his neck stiffly erect. At first I could see nothing, but presently I caught a glimpse of a bit of smooth and glossy green moving among the scarlet and purple and yellow of the vegetation. Motioning Woola to remain quietly where he was, I crept forward to investigate, and from behind the bole of a great tree I saw a long line of the hideous green warriors of the dead sea bottoms hiding in the dense jungle beside the road. As far as I could see, the silent line of destruction and death stretched away from the city of Kaol. There could be but one explanation. The green men were expecting an exodus of a body of red troops from the nearest city gate, and they were lying there in ambush to leap upon them. I owed no fealty to the Jeddak of Kaol, but he was of the same race of noble red men as my own princess, and I would not stand supinely by and see his warriors butchered by the cruel and heartless demons of the waste places of Barsoom. Cautiously I retraced my steps to where I had left Woola, and warning him to silence, signaled him to follow me. Making a considerable detour to avoid the chance of falling into the hands of the green men, I came at last to the great wall. A hundred yards to my right was the gate from which the troops were evidently expected to issue, but to reach it I must pass the flank of the green warriors within easy sight of them, and, fearing that my plan to warn the Kaolians might thus be thwarted, I decided upon hastening toward the left, where another gate a mile away would give me ingress to the city. I knew that the word I brought would prove a splendid passport to Kaol, and I must admit that my caution was due more to my ardent desire to make my way into the city than to avoid a brush with the green men. As much as I enjoy a fight, I cannot always indulge myself, and just now I had more weighty matters to occupy my time than spilling the blood of strange warriors. Could I but win beyond the city’s wall, there might be opportunity in the confusion and excitement which were sure to follow my announcement of an invading force of green warriors to find my way within the palace of the jeddak, where I was sure Matai Shang and his party would be quartered. But scarcely had I taken a hundred steps in the direction of the farther gate when the sound of marching troops, the clank of metal, and the squealing of thoats just within the city apprised me of the fact that the Kaolians were already moving toward the other gate. There was no time to be lost. In another moment the gate would be opened and the head of the column pass out upon the death-bordered highway. Turning back toward the fateful gate, I ran rapidly along the edge of the clearing, taking the ground in the mighty leaps that had first made me famous upon Barsoom. Thirty, fifty, a hundred feet at a bound are nothing for the muscles of an athletic Earth man upon Mars. As I passed the flank of the waiting green men they saw my eyes turned upon them, and in an instant, knowing that all secrecy was at an end, those nearest me sprang to their feet in an effort to cut me off before I could reach the gate. At the same instant the mighty portal swung wide and the head of the Kaolian column emerged. A dozen green warriors had succeeded in reaching a point between me and the gate, but they had but little idea who it was they had elected to detain. I did not slacken my speed an iota as I dashed among them, and as they fell before my blade I could not but recall the happy memory of those other battles when Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, mightiest of Martian green men, had stood shoulder to shoulder with me through long, hot Martian days, as together we hewed down our enemies until the pile of corpses about us rose higher than a tall man’s head. When several pressed me too closely, there before the carved gateway of Kaol, I leaped above their heads, and fashioning my tactics after those of the hideous plant men of Dor, struck down upon my enemies’ heads as I passed above them. From the city the red warriors were rushing toward us, and from the jungle the savage horde of green men were coming to meet them. In a moment I was in the very center of as fierce and bloody a battle as I had ever passed through. These Kaolians are most noble fighters, nor are the green men of the equator one whit less warlike than their cold, cruel cousins of the temperate zone. There were many times when either side might have withdrawn without dishonor and thus ended hostilities, but from the mad abandon with which each invariably renewed hostilities I soon came to believe that what need not have been more than a trifling skirmish would end only with the complete extermination of one force or the other. With the joy of battle once roused within me, I took keen delight in the fray, and that my fighting was noted by the Kaolians was often evidenced by the shouts of applause directed at me. If I sometimes seem to take too great pride in my fighting ability, it must be remembered that fighting is my vocation. If your vocation be shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not proud of your ability. And so I am very proud that upon two planets no greater fighter has ever lived than John Carter, Prince of Helium. And I outdid myself that day to impress the fact upon the natives of Kaol, for I wished to win a way into their hearts—and their city. Nor was I to be disappointed in my desire. All day we fought, until the road was red with blood and clogged with corpses. Back and forth along the slippery highway the tide of battle surged, but never once was the gateway to Kaol really in danger. There were breathing spells when I had a chance to converse with the red men beside whom I fought, and once the jeddak, Kulan Tith himself, laid his hand upon my shoulder and asked my name. “I am Dotar Sojat,” I replied, recalling a name given me by the Tharks many years before, from the surnames of the first two of their warriors I had killed, which is the custom among them. “You are a mighty warrior, Dotar Sojat,” he replied, “and when this day is done I shall speak with you again in the great audience chamber.” And then the fight surged upon us once more and we were separated, but my heart’s desire was attained, and it was with renewed vigor and a joyous soul that I laid about me with my long-sword until the last of the green men had had enough and had withdrawn toward their distant sea bottom. Not until the battle was over did I learn why the red troops had sallied forth that day. It seemed that Kulan Tith was expecting a visit from a mighty jeddak of the north—a powerful and the only ally of the Kaolians, and it had been his wish to meet his guest a full day’s journey from Kaol. But now the march of the welcoming host was delayed until the following morning, when the troops again set out from Kaol. I had not been bidden to the presence of Kulan Tith after the battle, but he had sent an officer to find me and escort me to comfortable quarters in that part of the palace set aside for the officers of the royal guard. There, with Woola, I had spent a comfortable night, and rose much refreshed after the arduous labors of the past few days. Woola had fought with me through the battle of the previous day, true to the instincts and training of a Martian war dog, great numbers of which are often to be found with the savage green hordes of the dead sea bottoms. Neither of us had come through the conflict unscathed, but the marvelous, healing salves of Barsoom had sufficed, overnight, to make us as good as new. I breakfasted with a number of the Kaolian officers, whom I found as courteous and delightful hosts as even the nobles of Helium, who are renowned for their ease of manners and excellence of breeding. The meal was scarcely concluded when a messenger arrived from Kulan Tith summoning me before him. As I entered the royal presence the jeddak rose, and stepping from the dais which supported his magnificent throne, came forward to meet me—a mark of distinction that is seldom accorded to other than a visiting ruler. “Kaor, Dotar Sojat!” he greeted me. “I have summoned you to receive the grateful thanks of the people of Kaol, for had it not been for your heroic bravery in daring fate to warn us of the ambuscade we must surely have fallen into the well-laid trap. Tell me more of yourself—from what country you come, and what errand brings you to the court of Kulan Tith.” “I am from Hastor,” I said, for in truth I had a small palace in that southern city which lies within the far-flung dominions of the Heliumetic nation. “My presence in the land of Kaol is partly due to accident, my flier being wrecked upon the southern fringe of your great forest. It was while seeking entrance to the city of Kaol that I discovered the green horde lying in wait for your troops.” If Kulan Tith wondered what business brought me in a flier to the very edge of his domain he was good enough not to press me further for an explanation, which I should indeed have had difficulty in rendering. During my audience with the jeddak another party entered the chamber from behind me, so that I did not see their faces until Kulan Tith stepped past me to greet them, commanding me to follow and be presented. As I turned toward them it was with difficulty that I controlled my features, for there, listening to Kulan Tith’s eulogistic words concerning me, stood my arch-enemies, Matai Shang and Thurid. “Holy Hekkador of the Holy Therns,” the jeddak was saying, “shower thy blessings upon Dotar Sojat, the valorous stranger from distant Hastor, whose wondrous heroism and marvelous ferocity saved the day for Kaol yesterday.” Matai Shang stepped forward and laid his hand upon my shoulder. No slightest indication that he recognized me showed upon his countenance—my disguise was evidently complete. He spoke kindly to me and then presented me to Thurid. The black, too, was evidently entirely deceived. Then Kulan Tith regaled them, much to my amusement, with details of my achievements upon the field of battle. The thing that seemed to have impressed him most was my remarkable agility, and time and again he described the wondrous way in which I had leaped completely over an antagonist, cleaving his skull wide open with my long-sword as I passed above him. I thought that I saw Thurid’s eyes widen a bit during the narrative, and several times I surprised him gazing intently into my face through narrowed lids. Was he commencing to suspect? And then Kulan Tith told of the savage calot that fought beside me, and after that I saw suspicion in the eyes of Matai Shang—or did I but imagine it? At the close of the audience Kulan Tith announced that he would have me accompany him upon the way to meet his royal guest, and as I departed with an officer who was to procure proper trappings and a suitable mount for me, both Matai Shang and Thurid seemed most sincere in professing their pleasure at having had an opportunity to know me. It was with a sigh of relief that I quitted the chamber, convinced that nothing more than a guilty conscience had prompted my belief that either of my enemies suspected my true identity. A half-hour later I rode out of the city gate with the column that accompanied Kulan Tith upon the way to meet his friend and ally. Though my eyes and ears had been wide open during my audience with the jeddak and my various passages through the palace, I had seen or heard nothing of Dejah Thoris or Thuvia of Ptarth. That they must be somewhere within the great rambling edifice I was positive, and I should have given much to have found a way to remain behind during Kulan Tith’s absence, that I might search for them. Toward noon we came in touch with the head of the column we had set out to meet. It was a gorgeous train that accompanied the visiting jeddak, and for miles it stretched along the wide, white road to Kaol. Mounted troops, their trappings of jewel and metal-incrusted leather glistening in the sunlight, formed the vanguard of the body, and then came a thousand gorgeous chariots drawn by huge zitidars. These low, commodious wagons moved two abreast, and on either side of them marched solid ranks of mounted warriors, for in the chariots were the women and children of the royal court. Upon the back of each monster zitidar rode a Martian youth, and the whole scene carried me back to my first days upon Barsoom, now twenty-two years in the past, when I had first beheld the gorgeous spectacle of a caravan of the green horde of Tharks. Never before today had I seen zitidars in the service of red men. These brutes are huge mastodonian animals that tower to an immense height even beside the giant green men and their giant thoats; but when compared to the relatively small red man and his breed of thoats they assume Brobdingnagian proportions that are truly appalling. The beasts were hung with jeweled trappings and saddlepads of gay silk, embroidered in fanciful designs with strings of diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, and the countless unnamed jewels of Mars, while from each chariot rose a dozen standards from which streamers, flags, and pennons fluttered in the breeze. Just in front of the chariots the visiting jeddak rode alone upon a pure white thoat—another unusual sight upon Barsoom—and after them came interminable ranks of mounted spearmen, riflemen, and swordsmen. It was indeed a most imposing sight. Except for the clanking of accouterments and the occasional squeal of an angry thoat or the low guttural of a zitidar, the passage of the cavalcade was almost noiseless, for neither thoat nor zitidar is a hoofed animal, and the broad tires of the chariots are of an elastic composition, which gives forth no sound. Now and then the gay laughter of a woman or the chatter of children could be heard, for the red Martians are a social, pleasure-loving people—in direct antithesis to the cold and morbid race of green men. The forms and ceremonials connected with the meeting of the two jeddaks consumed an hour, and then we turned and retraced our way toward the city of Kaol, which the head of the column reached just before dark, though it must have been nearly morning before the rear guard passed through the gateway. Fortunately, I was well up toward the head of the column, and after the great banquet, which I attended with the officers of the royal guard, I was free to seek repose. There was so much activity and bustle about the palace all during the night with the constant arrival of the noble officers of the visiting jeddak’s retinue that I dared not attempt to prosecute a search for Dejah Thoris, and so, as soon as it was seemly for me to do so, I returned to my quarters. As I passed along the corridors between the banquet hall and the apartments that had been allotted me, I had a sudden feeling that I was under surveillance, and, turning quickly in my tracks, caught a glimpse of a figure which darted into an open doorway the instant I wheeled about. Though I ran quickly back to the spot where the shadower had disappeared I could find no trace of him, yet in the brief glimpse that I had caught I could have sworn that I had seen a white face surmounted by a mass of yellow hair. The incident gave me considerable food for speculation, since if I were right in the conclusion induced by the cursory glimpse I had had of the spy, then Matai Shang and Thurid must suspect my identity, and if that were true not even the service I had rendered Kulan Tith could save me from his religious fanaticism. But never did vague conjecture or fruitless fears for the future lie with sufficient weight upon my mind to keep me from my rest, and so tonight I threw myself upon my sleeping silks and furs and passed at once into dreamless slumber. Calots are not permitted within the walls of the palace proper, and so I had had to relegate poor Woola to quarters in the stables where the royal thoats are kept. He had comfortable, even luxurious apartments, but I would have given much to have had him with me; and if he had been, the thing which happened that night would not have come to pass. I could not have slept over a quarter of an hour when I was suddenly awakened by the passing of some cold and clammy thing across my forehead. Instantly I sprang to my feet, clutching in the direction I thought the presence lay. For an instant my hand touched against human flesh, and then, as I lunged headforemost through the darkness to seize my nocturnal visitor, my foot became entangled in my sleeping silks and I fell sprawling to the floor. By the time I had resumed my feet and found the button which controlled the light my caller had disappeared. Careful search of the room revealed nothing to explain either the identity or business of the person who had thus secretly sought me in the dead of night. That the purpose might be theft I could not believe, since thieves are practically unknown upon Barsoom. Assassination, however, is rampant, but even this could not have been the motive of my stealthy friend, for he might easily have killed me had he desired. I had about given up fruitless conjecture and was on the point of returning to sleep when a dozen Kaolian guardsmen entered my apartment. The officer in charge was one of my genial hosts of the morning, but now upon his face was no sign of friendship. “Kulan Tith commands your presence before him,” he said. “Come!” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). The warlord of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68/pg68-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html. The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "Hero".

A HERO IN KAOL

ON THE KAOLIAN ROAD

The warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE NEW RULER THE NEW RULER The flier upon whose deck Dejah Thoris and I found ourselves after twelve long years of separation proved entirely useless. Her buoyancy tanks leaked badly. Her engine would not start. We were helpless there in mid air above the arctic ice. The craft had drifted across the chasm which held the corpses of Matai Shang, Thurid, and Phaidor, and now hung above a low hill. Opening the buoyancy escape valves I permitted her to come slowly to the ground, and as she touched, Dejah Thoris and I stepped from her deck and, hand in hand, turned back across the frozen waste toward the city of Kadabra. Through the tunnel that had led me in pursuit of them we passed, walking slowly, for we had much to say to each other. She told me of that last terrible moment months before when the door of her prison cell within the Temple of the Sun was slowly closing between us. Of how Phaidor had sprung upon her with uplifted dagger, and of Thuvia’s shriek as she had realized the foul intention of the thern goddess. It had been that cry that had rung in my ears all the long, weary months that I had been left in cruel doubt as to my princess’ fate; for I had not known that Thuvia had wrested the blade from the daughter of Matai Shang before it had touched either Dejah Thoris or herself. She told me, too, of the awful eternity of her imprisonment. Of the cruel hatred of Phaidor, and the tender love of Thuvia, and of how even when despair was the darkest those two red girls had clung to the same hope and belief—that John Carter would find a way to release them. Presently we came to the chamber of Solan. I had been proceeding without thought of caution, for I was sure that the city and the palace were both in the hands of my friends by this time. And so it was that I bolted into the chamber full into the midst of a dozen nobles of the court of Salensus Oll. They were passing through on their way to the outside world along the corridors we had just traversed. At sight of us they halted in their tracks, and then an ugly smile overspread the features of their leader. “The author of all our misfortunes!” he cried, pointing at me. “We shall have the satisfaction of a partial vengeance at least when we leave behind us here the dead and mutilated corpses of the Prince and Princess of Helium. “When they find them,” he went on, jerking his thumb upward toward the palace above, “they will realize that the vengeance of the yellow man costs his enemies dear. Prepare to die, John Carter, but that your end may be the more bitter, know that I may change my intention as to meting a merciful death to your princess—possibly she shall be preserved as a plaything for my nobles.” I stood close to the instrument-covered wall—Dejah Thoris at my side. She looked up at me wonderingly as the warriors advanced upon us with drawn swords, for mine still hung within its scabbard at my side, and there was a smile upon my lips. The yellow nobles, too, looked in surprise, and then as I made no move to draw they hesitated, fearing a ruse; but their leader urged them on. When they had come almost within sword’s reach of me I raised my hand and laid it upon the polished surface of a great lever, and then, still smiling grimly, I looked my enemies full in the face. As one they came to a sudden stop, casting affrighted glances at me and at one another. “Stop!” shrieked their leader. “You dream not what you do!” “Right you are,” I replied. “John Carter does not dream. He knows—knows that should one of you take another step toward Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, I pull this lever wide, and she and I shall die together; but we shall not die alone.” The nobles shrank back, whispering together for a few moments. At last their leader turned to me. “Go your way, John Carter,” he said, “and we shall go ours.” “Prisoners do not go their own way,” I answered, “and you are prisoners—prisoners of the Prince of Helium.” Before they could make answer a door upon the opposite side of the apartment opened and a score of yellow men poured into the apartment. For an instant the nobles looked relieved, and then as their eyes fell upon the leader of the new party their faces fell, for he was Talu, rebel Prince of Marentina, and they knew that they could look for neither aid nor mercy at his hands. “Well done, John Carter,” he cried. “You turn their own mighty power against them. Fortunate for Okar is it that you were here to prevent their escape, for these be the greatest villains north of the ice-barrier, and this one”—pointing to the leader of the party—“would have made himself Jeddak of Jeddaks in the place of the dead Salensus Oll. Then indeed would we have had a more villainous ruler than the hated tyrant who fell before your sword.” The Okarian nobles now submitted to arrest, since nothing but death faced them should they resist, and, escorted by the warriors of Talu, we made our way to the great audience chamber that had been Salensus Oll’s. Here was a vast concourse of warriors. Red men from Helium and Ptarth, yellow men of the north, rubbing elbows with the blacks of the First Born who had come under my friend Xodar to help in the search for me and my princess. There were savage, green warriors from the dead sea bottoms of the south, and a handful of white-skinned therns who had renounced their religion and sworn allegiance to Xodar. There was Tardos Mors and Mors Kajak, and tall and mighty in his gorgeous warrior trappings, Carthoris, my son. These three fell upon Dejah Thoris as we entered the apartment, and though the lives and training of royal Martians tend not toward vulgar demonstration, I thought that they would suffocate her with their embraces. And there were Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, and Kantos Kan, my old-time friends, and leaping and tearing at my harness in the exuberance of his great love was dear old Woola—frantic mad with happiness. Long and loud was the cheering that burst forth at sight of us; deafening was the din of ringing metal as the veteran warriors of every Martian clime clashed their blades together on high in token of success and victory, but as I passed among the throng of saluting nobles and warriors, jeds and jeddaks, my heart still was heavy, for there were two faces missing that I would have given much to have seen there—Thuvan Dihn and Thuvia of Ptarth were not to be found in the great chamber. I made inquiries concerning them among men of every nation, and at last from one of the yellow prisoners of war I learned that they had been apprehended by an officer of the palace as they sought to reach the Pit of Plenty while I lay imprisoned there. I did not need to ask to know what had sent them thither—the courageous jeddak and his loyal daughter. My informer said that they lay now in one of the many buried dungeons of the palace where they had been placed pending a decision as to their fate by the tyrant of the north. A moment later searching parties were scouring the ancient pile in search of them, and my cup of happiness was full when I saw them being escorted into the room by a cheering guard of honor. Thuvia’s first act was to rush to the side of Dejah Thoris, and I needed no better proof of the love these two bore for each other than the sincerity with which they embraced. Looking down upon that crowded chamber stood the silent and empty throne of Okar. Of all the strange scenes it must have witnessed since that long-dead age that had first seen a Jeddak of Jeddaks take his seat upon it, none might compare with that upon which it now looked down, and as I pondered the past and future of that long-buried race of black-bearded yellow men I thought that I saw a brighter and more useful existence for them among the great family of friendly nations that now stretched from the south pole almost to their very doors. Twenty-two years before I had been cast, naked and a stranger, into this strange and savage world. The hand of every race and nation was raised in continual strife and warring against the men of every other land and color. Today, by the might of my sword and the loyalty of the friends my sword had made for me, black man and white, red man and green rubbed shoulders in peace and good-fellowship. All the nations of Barsoom were not yet as one, but a great stride forward toward that goal had been taken, and now if I could but cement the fierce yellow race into this solidarity of nations I should feel that I had rounded out a great lifework, and repaid to Mars at least a portion of the immense debt of gratitude I owed her for having given me my Dejah Thoris. And as I thought, I saw but one way, and a single man who could insure the success of my hopes. As is ever the way with me, I acted then as I always act—without deliberation and without consultation. Those who do not like my plans and my ways of promoting them have always their swords at their sides wherewith to back up their disapproval; but now there seemed to be no dissenting voice, as, grasping Talu by the arm, I sprang to the throne that had once been Salensus Oll’s. “Warriors of Barsoom,” I cried, “Kadabra has fallen, and with her the hateful tyrant of the north; but the integrity of Okar must be preserved. The red men are ruled by red jeddaks, the green warriors of the ancient seas acknowledge none but a green ruler, the First Born of the south pole take their law from black Xodar; nor would it be to the interests of either yellow or red man were a red jeddak to sit upon the throne of Okar. “There be but one warrior best fitted for the ancient and mighty title of Jeddak of Jeddaks of the North. Men of Okar, raise your swords to your new ruler—Talu, the rebel prince of Marentina!” And then a great cry of rejoicing rose among the free men of Marentina and the Kadabran prisoners, for all had thought that the red men would retain that which they had taken by force of arms, for such had been the way upon Barsoom, and that they should be ruled henceforth by an alien Jeddak. The victorious warriors who had followed Carthoris joined in the mad demonstration, and amidst the wild confusion and the tumult and the cheering, Dejah Thoris and I passed out into the gorgeous garden of the jeddaks that graces the inner courtyard of the palace of Kadabra. At our heels walked Woola, and upon a carved seat of wondrous beauty beneath a bower of purple blooms we saw two who had preceded us—Thuvia of Ptarth and Carthoris of Helium. The handsome head of the handsome youth was bent low above the beautiful face of his companion. I looked at Dejah Thoris, smiling, and as I drew her close to me I whispered: “Why not?” Indeed, why not? What matter ages in this world of perpetual youth? We remained at Kadabra, the guests of Talu, until after his formal induction into office, and then, upon the great fleet which I had been so fortunate to preserve from destruction, we sailed south across the ice-barrier; but not before we had witnessed the total demolition of the grim Guardian of the North under orders of the new Jeddak of Jeddaks. “Henceforth,” he said, as the work was completed, “the fleets of the red men and the black are free to come and go across the ice-barrier as over their own lands. “The Carrion Caves shall be cleansed, that the green men may find an easy way to the land of the yellow, and the hunting of the sacred apt shall be the sport of my nobles until no single specimen of that hideous creature roams the frozen north.” We bade our yellow friends farewell with real regret, as we set sail for Ptarth. There we remained, the guest of Thuvan Dihn, for a month; and I could see that Carthoris would have remained forever had he not been a Prince of Helium. Above the mighty forests of Kaol we hovered until word from Kulan Tith brought us to his single landing-tower, where all day and half a night the vessels disembarked their crews. At the city of Kaol we visited, cementing the new ties that had been formed between Kaol and Helium, and then one long-to-be-remembered day we sighted the tall, thin towers of the twin cities of Helium. The people had long been preparing for our coming. The sky was gorgeous with gaily trimmed fliers. Every roof within both cities was spread with costly silks and tapestries. Gold and jewels were scattered over roof and street and plaza, so that the two cities seemed ablaze with the fires of the hearts of the magnificent stones and burnished metal that reflected the brilliant sunlight, changing it into countless glorious hues. At last, after twelve years, the royal family of Helium was reunited in their own mighty city, surrounded by joy-mad millions before the palace gates. Women and children and mighty warriors wept in gratitude for the fate that had restored their beloved Tardos Mors and the divine princess whom the whole nation idolized. Nor did any of us who had been upon that expedition of indescribable danger and glory lack for plaudits. That night a messenger came to me as I sat with Dejah Thoris and Carthoris upon the roof of my city palace, where we had long since caused a lovely garden to be made that we three might find seclusion and quiet happiness among ourselves, far from the pomp and ceremony of court, to summon us to the Temple of Reward—“where one is to be judged this night,” the summons concluded. I racked my brain to try and determine what important case there might be pending which could call the royal family from their palaces on the eve of their return to Helium after years of absence; but when the jeddak summons no man delays. As our flier touched the landing stage at the temple’s top we saw countless other craft arriving and departing. In the streets below a great multitude surged toward the great gates of the temple. Slowly there came to me the recollection of the deferred doom that awaited me since that time I had been tried here in the Temple by Zat Arras for the sin of returning from the Valley Dor and the Lost Sea of Korus. Could it be possible that the strict sense of justice which dominates the men of Mars had caused them to overlook the great good that had come out of my heresy? Could they ignore the fact that to me, and me alone, was due the rescue of Carthoris, of Dejah Thoris, of Mors Kajak, of Tardos Mors? I could not believe it, and yet for what other purpose could I have been summoned to the Temple of Reward immediately upon the return of Tardos Mors to his throne? My first surprise as I entered the temple and approached the Throne of Righteousness was to note the men who sat there as judges. There was Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, whom we had but just left within his own palace a few days since; there was Thuvan Dihn, Jeddak of Ptarth—how came he to Helium as soon as we? There was Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, and Xodar, Jeddak of the First Born; there was Talu, Jeddak of Jeddaks of the North, whom I could have sworn was still in his ice-bound hothouse city beyond the northern barrier, and among them sat Tardos Mors and Mors Kajak, with enough lesser jeds and jeddaks to make up the thirty-one who must sit in judgment upon their fellow-man. A right royal tribunal indeed, and such a one, I warrant, as never before sat together during all the history of ancient Mars. As I entered, silence fell upon the great concourse of people that packed the auditorium. Then Tardos Mors arose. “John Carter,” he said in his deep, martial voice, “take your place upon the Pedestal of Truth, for you are to be tried by a fair and impartial tribunal of your fellow-men.” With level eye and high-held head I did as he bade, and as I glanced about that circle of faces that a moment before I could have sworn contained the best friends I had upon Barsoom, I saw no single friendly glance—only stern, uncompromising judges, there to do their duty. A clerk rose and from a great book read a long list of the more notable deeds that I had thought to my credit, covering a long period of twenty-two years since first I had stepped the ocher sea bottom beside the incubator of the Tharks. With the others he read of all that I had done within the circle of the Otz Mountains where the Holy Therns and the First Born had held sway. It is the way upon Barsoom to recite a man’s virtues with his sins when he is come to trial, and so I was not surprised that all that was to my credit should be read there to my judges—who knew it all by heart—even down to the present moment. When the reading had ceased Tardos Mors arose. “Most righteous judges,” he exclaimed, “you have heard recited all that is known of John Carter, Prince of Helium—the good with the bad. What is your judgment?” Then Tars Tarkas came slowly to his feet, unfolding all his mighty, towering height until he loomed, a green-bronze statue, far above us all. He turned a baleful eye upon me—he, Tars Tarkas, with whom I had fought through countless battles; whom I loved as a brother. I could have wept had I not been so mad with rage that I almost whipped my sword out and had at them all upon the spot. “Judges,” he said, “there can be but one verdict. No longer may John Carter be Prince of Helium”—he paused—“but instead let him be Jeddak of Jeddaks, Warlord of Barsoom!” As the thirty-one judges sprang to their feet with drawn and upraised swords in unanimous concurrence in the verdict, the storm broke throughout the length and breadth and height of that mighty building until I thought the roof would fall from the thunder of the mad shouting. Now, at last, I saw the grim humor of the method they had adopted to do me this great honor, but that there was any hoax in the reality of the title they had conferred upon me was readily disproved by the sincerity of the congratulations that were heaped upon me by the judges first and then the nobles. Presently fifty of the mightiest nobles of the greatest courts of Mars marched down the broad Aisle of Hope bearing a splendid car upon their shoulders, and as the people saw who sat within, the cheers that had rung out for me paled into insignificance beside those which thundered through the vast edifice now, for she whom the nobles carried was Dejah Thoris, beloved Princess of Helium. Straight to the Throne of Righteousness they bore her, and there Tardos Mors assisted her from the car, leading her forward to my side. “Let a world’s most beautiful woman share the honor of her husband,” he said. Before them all I drew my wife close to me and kissed her upon the lips. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). The warlord of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68/pg68-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html. The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "New Ruler".

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