For ten days the hordes of Thark and their wild allies were feasted and
entertained, and, then, loaded with costly presents and escorted by ten
thousand soldiers of Helium commanded by Mors Kajak, they started on
the return journey to their own lands. The jed of lesser Helium with a
small party of nobles accompanied them all the way to Thark to cement
more closely the new bonds of peace and friendship.
Sola also accompanied Tars Tarkas, her father, who before all his
chieftains had acknowledged her as his daughter.
Three weeks later, Mors Kajak and his officers, accompanied by Tars
Tarkas and Sola, returned upon a battleship that had been dispatched to
Thark to fetch them in time for the ceremony which made Dejah Thoris
and John Carter one.
For nine years I served in the councils and fought in the armies of
Helium as a prince of the house of Tardos Mors. The people seemed
never to tire of heaping honors upon me, and no day passed that did not
bring some new proof of their love for my princess, the incomparable
Dejah Thoris.
In a golden incubator upon the roof of our palace lay a snow-white egg.
For nearly five years ten soldiers of the jeddak's Guard had constantly
stood over it, and not a day passed when I was in the city that Dejah
Thoris and I did not stand hand in hand before our little shrine
planning for the future, when the delicate shell should break.
Vivid in my memory is the picture of the last night as we sat there
talking in low tones of the strange romance which had woven our lives
together and of this wonder which was coming to augment our happiness
and fulfill our hopes.
In the distance we saw the bright-white light of an approaching
airship, but we attached no special significance to so common a sight.
Like a bolt of lightning it raced toward Helium until its very speed
bespoke the unusual.
Flashing the signals which proclaimed it a dispatch bearer for the
jeddak, it circled impatiently awaiting the tardy patrol boat which
must convoy it to the palace docks.
Ten minutes after it touched at the palace a message called me to the
council chamber, which I found filling with the members of that body.
On the raised platform of the throne was Tardos Mors, pacing back and
forth with tense-drawn face. When all were in their seats he turned
toward us.
"This morning," he said, "word reached the several governments of
Barsoom that the keeper of the atmosphere plant had made no wireless
report for two days, nor had almost ceaseless calls upon him from a
score of capitals elicited a sign of response.
"The ambassadors of the other nations asked us to take the matter in
hand and hasten the assistant keeper to the plant. All day a thousand
cruisers have been searching for him until just now one of them returns
bearing his dead body, which was found in the pits beneath his house
horribly mutilated by some assassin.