A Princess of Mars

It was dark when I opened my eyes again. Strange, stiff garments were

upon my body; garments that cracked and powdered away from me as I rose

to a sitting posture.

I felt myself over from head to foot and from head to foot I was

clothed, though when I fell unconscious at the little doorway I had

been naked. Before me was a small patch of moonlit sky which showed

through a ragged aperture.

As my hands passed over my body they came in contact with pockets and

in one of these a small parcel of matches wrapped in oiled paper. One

of these matches I struck, and its dim flame lighted up what appeared

to be a huge cave, toward the back of which I discovered a strange,

still figure huddled over a tiny bench. As I approached it I saw that

it was the dead and mummified remains of a little old woman with long

black hair, and the thing it leaned over was a small charcoal burner

upon which rested a round copper vessel containing a small quantity of

greenish powder.

Behind her, depending from the roof upon rawhide thongs, and stretching

entirely across the cave, was a row of human skeletons. From the thong

which held them stretched another to the dead hand of the little old

woman; as I touched the cord the skeletons swung to the motion with a

noise as of the rustling of dry leaves.

It was a most grotesque and horrid tableau and I hastened out into the

fresh air; glad to escape from so gruesome a place.

The sight that met my eyes as I stepped out upon a small ledge which

ran before the entrance of the cave filled me with consternation.

A new heaven and a new landscape met my gaze. The silvered mountains

in the distance, the almost stationary moon hanging in the sky, the

cacti-studded valley below me were not of Mars. I could scarcely

believe my eyes, but the truth slowly forced itself upon me--I was

looking upon Arizona from the same ledge from which ten years before I

had gazed with longing upon Mars.

Burying my head in my arms I turned, broken, and sorrowful, down the

trail from the cave.

Above me shone the red eye of Mars holding her awful secret,

forty-eight million miles away.

Did the Martian reach the pump room? Did the vitalizing air reach the

people of that distant planet in time to save them? Was my Dejah

Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body lie cold in death beside the

tiny golden incubator in the sunken garden of the inner courtyard of

the palace of Tardos Mors, the jeddak of Helium?